City of Home 

Image from City of Home by Alina Kisina

Alina Kisina is a Ukrainian photographer living in London who regularly returns to her homeland to take pictures that bring out the spirituality of its mundane objects and scenes. For the exhibition at Light House, Kisina will produce a selection of new images during a series of trips to Kiev to contribute to the ongoing work.

City of Home might, at first glance, seem merely aimed at capturing the daily life of her hometown of Kiev, Ukraine, yet Kisina’s photographs are strangely evocative. She admits she originally wanted them to be documentary impressions, but she found herself compelled to create a series of half abstract, half representational photographs that conflate Kiev’s cityscapes and interiors. Kisina’s images become a dialectical and lyrical space questioning the changing state of both personal and cultural values in Ukraine.

She aims to open up realms above and beyond the mundane images that define the surface of her work. The subway steps, skylines, facades, and factory lots that Kisina depicts resonate with an order that seems not of this world. Her pictures – often quite literally – reflect realms that seem to exist side-by-side with or beyond the mere materials of her everyday subject matter. Although superficially static, her serene, perfectly composed photographs actively lead us into higher realms that are uplifting and light: they cause us to transcend the materiality of everyday existence.

Kisina prefers not to include any dates and locations, or any reference to the actual city, preferring people to make a connection on seeing her images, with a city they are familiar with and which might enhance their “journey”. Instead, Kisina uses recurring idents such as stairs and reflections to represent how she feels about herself, her “journey”, and her city of home. Using intuition and describing her images as having found her, rather than the other way round, this exhibition will be a shake-up to the rigour of our documentary programme.
http://light-house.co.uk/