Valery Katsuba | PHOTOGRAPHY LITERATURE VIDEO PERFORMANCE

Valery Katsuba

SEASONS. MY FRIENDS

SEASONS. MY FRIENDS
2000 — 2005

One day, while I was waiting for the editor of a Moscow magazine, I was idly looking at the portraits on the walls that had been torn out of the magazine, depicting people who were entirely unknown to me. I started comparing the eyebrows, eyelashes and lips of the editor’s favourites, looking for similarities and differences. And only stopped doing it when I realised that there was no need to do it: that every person has his own destiny, unknown above all to himself. The inevitability, even a happy one, of being with me or with us now, and the inevitability of then going away. And he doesn’t know where he is going, only that he has to go. And love is respect for another destiny, for the mystery of another world, and the realization that the most important thing for a person is to approach, step by step, with dignity and anxiety, a knowledge of himself, just as it is important for me to come to a knowledge of myself. Of our own accord we all look at each other in an attempt to find out why we are here. We are here to value, feel and love someone else’s world, which is grateful and ready to return the joy and happiness contained in it. It is mysterious, but embodies an inexplicable meaning and beauty. And the gratitude of the photographer is above all for the permission to capture a person’s unique quality.