In 2023, KORRIDOR, the award for documentary photography, granted by the Tyrolean street paper 20er–Die Tiroler Straßenzeitung and the city of Innsbruck, invited photographers to submit works dealing with the situation of refugees within the EU and its (political) outskirts. Alisa Martynova, emerging photographer from Russia, won this year’s award with her documentary series „Nowhere Near“, in which she reflects on stereotypes of African immigrants in Italy. For komplex, Brage Havik had the chance to speak with Alisa Martynova about these topics and her works.

BRAGE

You were born in Orenburg, Russia. What was that like, and how is it that you made your way all the way to Italy?

ALISA

Well, I was born there, so it was normal, I guess, nothing really special. I did school there and I sort of approached art in general there because I was acting at a theatre school. Then, when I went to university, I also studied there. I studied philology – meaning literature, English language and French, and all the history of languages. Whilst I was attending university, I was also acting in experimental theatre. So, that was like the first time I approached the way the metaphors work, where you say something without actually saying it. Then, I got really into filmmaking. I was actually thinking about becoming a filmmaker, but I took a trial course in filmmaking in Prague and a trial course in photography in Florence. I understood that I actually felt more comfortable in photography, and that’s how I first approached Italy – actually by chance. I chose photography, and I chose living in Italy as well, in Florence. That’s how it came by.

BRAGE

So what specifically drew you to photography as a medium? You explored a lot of different artistic mediums like theatre, literature, film making and photography – and then you found yourself most comfortable with the latter. Do you know why that is?

ALISA

Well, while I was working in theatre, I was not really comfortable with being myself on stage, so at some point I decided to quit. And then, with filmmaking – I mean, my greatest inspiration is still cinema and films and the director’s work. Filmmaking is actually quite similar to my photographic work because I’m not only documenting the reality, but I’m trying to first set the concept and understand how I can represent it. I stage photographs. So it’s a lot like cinema, but it’s different because photography doesn’t need a lot of equipment, doesn’t need a lot of people, and doesn’t need a big production budget. So that’s why I chose photography and not cinema. Although I’m still sort of approaching video making and filmmaking in my work because I still like it. In fact, the exhibition that is now on show at Reich für die Insel [20.12.22 – 4.2.23], there is a video work as well. I actually try to incorporate in my photography different artistic mediums because at some point, only photography gets a bit limited and so why not use all the other things that we have, like audio and moving image. So I think of it also as an installation. I work with installations, it’s something that enhances the work and lets you convey the message better.

BRAGE

I see. What directors or what type of films inspired you most?

ALISA

My favourite director is Jim Jarmusch. It’s not connected to my photography, but he’s a great inspiration to me because of his way of making work, he looks for poetry. And when I was studying Philology, I got really into poetry as well, especially the romantic period. In fact, my thesis was called ‘Artist and Poet’, and I was looking at the Pre-Raphaelite paintings and the poems that they wrote for them, which explained the symbology of the work. So somehow, I think it’s the approach that is similar, more than the visual part. Wim Wenders is another director I like. Especially his way of approaching light, for example, is really beautiful. They are not necessarily a direct inspiration to my work, but it’s more their general approach.

BRAGE

I’ve seen you also quote the surrealist writer André Breton.

ALISA

Yeah, I was quoting him for a project that I made, ‘Sleeping Pill’, it’s called. It was made during the coronavirus pandemic, during the first lockdown. Again, my Philology studies gave me sort of a method of work. So when I was studying the subject, ‘Sleeping Pill’ was quite personal, but I was still sort of studying myself as a subject, and it includes lots of literary readings, a lot of materials, because, again, I’m quite intuitive in my work, so I know that I want to somehow represent this, but I don’t really know why or how. So then I read about it, and actually, Andrew Breton was an advice from a friend. I also read a lot of interviews with artists and directors as well, because it’s also like, – artistic work is strange – right? Sometimes you just need to know, to hear or to read that someone else is going through the same struggles or through the same methods, and that you’re sort of going in the right direction. So that’s why I do it.

BRAGE

In a description for your project ‘In the Forest, the Trees Vote’, you wrote “I was born in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through my work, I attempt to delve deeper into the events and realities that took place at the beginning of it.” Could you elaborate on this? What is it, you mean?

ALISA

Well, it was my reflection which has since evolved and changed a little bit, actually. I started that project because I have always wanted to make a project about Russia. And it was difficult for me to do it in the reportage way, so I decided this was not the right way to say it. I was trying first to find the story, and then how to represent it. And since I was here in Italy, I started looking for a story about migration. Since it was the project that started after ‘Nowhere Near’, which is again a story about migration, it was important for me that I could find something to work with, archival materials, descendants of these families – if I were to speak about a more distant event in the history, I would have had less material to work with. The story closer to the narrative was the migration of families and people who escaped after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 from Russia, which was when the Soviet Union was formed. And, my reflection was that I was trying to instinctively find a way of how to represent the ‘being’ of Russian. Like, what constitutes the culture and the mindset.

If you think back in the history, there’s a lot more there. So it triggered the questions in me – What is it to be Russian? What has it been culturally? And lots of conversations further triggered this interest in me. And then, I thought that it was actually somehow about the Soviet Union at first, but no, it’s not, it’s more about being Russian. I mostly look for the answers in written work, in cultural work and in history. And it’s still a very rich culture with very rich history. I’m still trying to represent it in my work, it’s something quite intimate to me, something delicate. And I think that it somehow deals with the stereotyping of the culture, and that’s what I’m trying to confront in my work. Like when I was confronted with the stereotype of African migration and I was trying to break that. And now again, I’m sort of trying to confront this stereotype.

BRAGE

Congratulations on winning the Korridor prize, by the way. It took place in Innsbruck. How did you get involved in the contest and subsequently, what is your connection to Innsbruck, if any?

ALISA

Thank you! Well, my first encounter with Innsbruck was this summer, when I won the award. And just because I still didn’t have a lot of opportunities to travel around all the European countries, but I actually really loved it. I felt that there was a very vibrant student energy, which is a change from when you are coming from Florence which is based on tourism and things. So it was quite a breath of fresh air. As for the contest, they published an open call. So that’s how I got in touch with them. I just submitted my work and then they contacted me and they said I won, and I was really happy about it.

BRAGE

And you won with your project ‘Nowhere Near’. What is it that puts that project aside from the earlier projects you’ve done?

ALISA

Well, actually, the Russia migration project is the second project. So ‘Nowhere Near’ is my first big body of work. And if I look back, that was one of the first things that I was doing in photography, because I started in a three year professional photography school in Florence. In my first year, I had a very personal approach to photography, still quite metaphoric, but more on the personal side. And then in the second year, we had different sort of exercises, different projects during the school year, and so we started the project of documentary photography. That’s when I began working for documentary photographers, and at some point understood that I prefer speaking about things that are important to me. I mean how long can you speak about yourself? There are photographers who do that really well, but it was just not the way that I actually wanted to do it.

On the other hand, what I would actually find is that I’m still speaking about myself in a way, because the people who I connect to the stories, they somehow represent who I am as well. This then became the project where I actually accumulated the visual style and methodology that that I’m going to follow. It was sort of the first statement of saying, like, Hi! I’m doing photography and I’m an artist. I’m really happy that it actually worked out and that it was not forgotten. It actually gave me more motivation to keep pursuing this path. With all the people who I connected to, be it either the first characters of the project who told me their stories, or the people within the industry who were sharing their opinions about my work. All these actually made me sure that I would like to be a photographer.

BRAGE

So you now have two projects that focus on migration. What is it about the topic that sparks your interest so much?

ALISA

Just that I don’t really know. That’s the thing. I mean, I do know, it’s more on a subconscious level. Firstly – migration is an essential part of the human being, it’s always moving, and it’s always looking for places. It’s really something akin to a primordial drive, a primordial feeling that has always been there. It also lies within the core development of humanity. All the cultures and their changes came through migration. The fact that, right now, migration is sort of limited to the African refugees, the people who are coming with boats, shows a really stereotypical way of seeing the migration. That’s why I was trying to confront it in the beginning. In general migration is a very interesting phenomenon, because it all contains the mirror to the realities that the people live in, and that drive them or force them to change places. So it’s sort of a mirror to the world to reflecting the changes, and the desires of people – like what they want, what they need, what they strive for, and what’s important to them. Another interesting idea in migration is the question of origins. Again, what constitutes you and your origins? It somehow comes together with my question, what does it mean to be Russian? Or in general what does it mean to be a person of another culture, and that’s the thing that I also worked on in ‘Nowhere Near’ in France, because the project was made in two parts, first in Italy, and then in France. So in France I was trying to speak about the topic of origins, because some of the migrants decided to reject their origins and become as European as they could so that they would blend in with their environment, whilst others would try to manifest their origins as they were proud of them. So again, it’s a very complex topic. I think that’s why I got interested in it.

BRAGE

In ‘Nowhere Near’ you focus on African immigrants who have immigrated to Italy and France. Why that specific focus?

ALISA

Well first, it was driven by the actual situation and my move to Italy in 2016. The phenomenon of migration was very much in the spotlight on the news, and everybody was talking about it. I really hadn’t encountered African migration before, and so I was trying to understand what is it about. In fact, in my first year at school I actually made a reportage about refugee centres or migration centres in Italy. And then, gradually, as I came back to the topic, some people asked me like, ‘why don’t you picture all the migrants from different nations?’ And ‘why do you only concentrate on the African migrants?’ But if you were to assess migration on a global level, then the project is too big. As well, what was said to me by the people who work with migrants is that the general tendency is that African migrants encounter more difficulties than the migrants from the other communities. So, at that time, it was mostly the symbol of a migrant, or one of them at least, so that’s why I decided to focus only on that.

BRAGE

Was there anything in particular that really shocked you or maybe just surprised you during your research for the project?

ALISA

Well, a lot of bad things actually. One of the moments that struck me most is when I was reading this book which speaks about the worst shipwreck in the recent history of migration. It was speaking about all the people who manage to survive, but from the perspective of individuals and their memories, and the things that they had to experience. For example, the crossing of the desert, or of trafficking. It was very much like a reportage political book. At some point, I was sat in a café reading this book as I was waiting for one of the migrants who I asked to meet. As I was there I happened to read a passage about all the tortures that they had to experience, I think it was in prison in Libya. I was really shocked, it was really difficult. Afterwards, the person came, and we were talking, and at some point he spontaneously started talking about his experience of migration and it echoed the passages I just read in the book. And that was the hard moment because the scenes from the book suddenly became even more real… that was one of the most shocking moments.

| Brage Haavik

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Ein weiteres Interview mit Alisa Martynova sowie Beiträge zu den vier Shortlist-Nominierten des Korridor-Preises Malte Uchtmann (@malteuchtmann), Sinawi Medine (@zenmedine), Hossein Fardinfard (@hossein.foto) und @refocusmedialabs gibt es außerdem in der ersten Fotoausgabe des 20er–Die Tiroler Straßenzeitung (noch bis März auf den Straßen Innsbrucks und Tirols zu erwerben).