Pearly Gates

Dedicated to Valeria Koshkina, incredibly bright and charismatic fairy alien, who suffered from anorexia. When I found out about her death (my love for her is beyond any comments), I was overwhelmed with a strong feeling of guilt. I felt guilty for all of us, who worship the media cult of the skinny and support fake destructive stereotypes of beauty. Since then I promised myself not to retouch photos at all and to show wild raw sex, the energy of freedom, intimacy and love. I felt guilty for anything except love. Pearly Gates are the doors to heaven as well as a name for ‘vagina’ and a type of LSD-25. You can enter the doors. Or you can stand in front of them.

Anastasiya Lazurenko (1987) is a photographer born in Lugansk in Ukraine, now based in Odessa. She has studied photography at various workshops around Europe and her work has been published in such magazines as Dazed & Confused and British Journal of Photography.