​VICTORIA KNOBLOCH

My photographs are presenting a visual encounter with Saint Petersburg and Moscow in the gloomy month of November in 2021. As a photographer I felt a deep magic and fascination in the streets of both cities.

The moody and melancholy atmosphere of the dark month of november reflects the rather "Gloomy Russian soul" very well. This melancholy trait also shapes the mental and emotional depth of Russian culture with its great artistic and poetic works.

Dostoevsky once claimed: "The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything".

The Russian soul represents the cultural tendency of Russians to experience life not from the perpective of the "American way of life" with its strong individualism and the pursuit of earthly happiness and prosperity, but from a much deeper religious and philosophical symbolic perspective.
The inner representations of "The Russian soul" like sensitivity, strength, poetry, mysticism, integrety, introspection, intuition and emotional depth are also reflected in the atmosphere of these photographs.