Yelena YemchukOdesa

“Time is different in Odessa. It’s a city out of time.”

Growing up in Kiev, Yelena Yemchuk was fascinated by Odessa’s reputation as a free place during the Soviet era. The city seemed full of contradictions – “acceptance but also danger”. A place of jokes and characters, populated by outlaws and intellectuals”. She first visited Odessa in 2003 and returned in 2015 to begin photographing the city and its people over a four-year period. This book is Yemchuk’s visual ode to the city.

In 1981, when Yemchuk was eleven years old, her family immigrated to the United States from their home in Kiev, Ukraine. They could not tell anyone outside their family about their plans to leave, and crossing the “iron curtain” at the time meant that they could never return to their home country. Ten years later, when Ukraine announced its independence, the artist was able to return to his home country to visit.