Years Like Water

Years Like Water is a decade-long look at a small Russian village, its inhabitants, ramshackle institutions, nature, and mythology. The series loosely follows the lives of four interconnected families, showing children grow up unsupervised in a magical wilderness, and adults struggle for survival in the same. For over ten years of visits, Sablin attended birthdays and funerals, drank tea with the grandmothers, and listened to stories of the villagers' loneliness and love for one another. Her photographs from Alekhovshchina explore and describe a world that doesn't fit into the neat narrative of "Putin's Russia" put forth by both Eastern and Western media. It is more complicated - interweaving beauty, poverty, trauma, and hope.