Father is a decade-long exploration of absence, memory, and the possibility of reconciliation, tracing my journey to piece together a relationship with my father through photography, archival materials, film, and writing.
When I was seven, my mother woke me in our apartment in Moscow and told me to pack my belongings. We didn’t say goodbye to my father. The next morning, we arrived in California. I didn’t understand it then, but it would become our new home.
For my mom, the way to forget my father was simple: she cut his image out of every family photograph. For me, those holes made it harder to erase him. In America, I waited for him to come find me. He never did. I often wondered what it would have been like to have a father. I still do.
This project is my attempt to piece together a relationship with him, two decades after our separation.
Father premiered at the National Portrait Gallery and has since been presented at Foam Amsterdam, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Fotografiska Berlin, and the Armenian Museum of America. Upcoming exhibitions include Fotografiska Stockholm, the Museum of Australian Photography, and Les Champs Libres.
I knock on the door of a stranger.
I’ve traveled halfway around the world to find him.
My father.
It’s been 15 years since I’ve seen him.
His face gaunt.
His hair gray.
His movement slow.
“Why did it take you so long?” he asks.
He invites me in.
His home is a museum of my childhood.
He says he’s been looking for me.
He opens a suitcase.
Inside, a newspaper clipping, a shirt for my brother’s future wedding, and hundreds of letters in
search of me.
For 15 years, my father and grandfather wrote letters to embassies, police stations, toy stores,
and random American addresses they found.
The letters never reached us.
I listen to him speak about the past.
My parents met in university.
My mother had just turned 21.
It’s strange to look at images of them together.
They look so happy, so in love.
He asks me to stay.
Not long after, my father has another child, a little girl.
I should be happy for him, but I am not.
Why does she get to have him, and I don’t?
Even now.
There are moments when he seems to open up a little.
Like the night he shares his poetry with me,
or the evening at the symphony.
He sneaks in chocolates; we eat them in the dark.
But then he’s gone.
I keep searching for him.
I think I always will.
