In 2019, in the frames of a three-month long documentary photography course lead by Kalev Vapper at the Open Academy of the Estonian Academy of Arts, I turned my lens towards various objects in order to discover the stories they contain or possibly tell of their known or unknown owners: objects one gets attached to; objects being gifted, collected, lost and found, lent and borrowed, forgotten and abandoned, put up for sale, thrown away… I was interested in the ways how and in the reasons why everyday objects become imbued with meaning and in the conditions under which their value changes. Simultaneously, I questioned to what extent photography has the power to inject value into objects or reconstruct it. Regardless of their objective worth, over time some things turn out useless and others become irreplaceable. Is it always painful to lose precious keepsakes or could it be liberating as well? When is it time to let go of things that have become an extension of our self and make up our past, actual or dreamt up identities? What happens to our arduously accumulated and carefully curated possessions in the course of our lives, and thereafter, when a stranger stumbles upon them?

Archeology of sorts, this process of categorizing, typologizing and documenting objects doesn’t necessarily speak of facts, rather it feeds the imagining of possible truths and hidden stories. With it comes the (albeit illusionary) comfort of knowing that our surroundings are understandable, controllable and graspable; that there must be something about us, within us, which remains the same even if everything else is constantly changing. It is also an exercise of keeping the pieces of one’s identity together and protecting oneself from forgetting.

Partially, the inspiration for this project came from reading Sergei Dovlatov’s novel The Suitcase, originally published in Russian in 1986. It contains eight autobiographical stories based on items the author brought in his suitcase on his exile to the USA in 1978. I started out by documenting a set of personal belongings I have irrationally and systematically carried with me when moving from one country to another in the last decade, things asked from and given to me by my parents that I could not bear losing. Each image testifies that at some moment in time this object existed and it was mine; it was important to me; it spoke of my relationship with my place of origin and my past, but also of my desires for the future; at some moment in time, this object was me. Even if I moved on to approach the same questions from other perspectives—through objects found in public space or other people’s possessions, these images inevitably reveal more about myself than anyone else.

The images in the series Treasure trove, Self-identity kit, Like father, like son, as well as the experimental handmade book For Mati (more below), all form part of this work.