I could have known you, but I never did

A couple of years ago, just as I moved to Czech Republic, I found a photo of a woman on a bookshelf in a park. It was a typical 70’s studio shot of a young woman, pressed between the pages of the travel guide to the city of Brno. The back of the book had a stamp saying Property of Burešov Home for the elderly on it.

I decided to go on an abstract search for this woman. It seemed to me that this “journey” was a search for myself in a new country through a person I had never known. I imagined how and when we might have crossed paths (or never). By composing landscapes from nonexistent memories, I model situations and places in which we might (not) have met.

The project I could have known you, but I never did is a reflection on migration and finding yourself in new conditions.

Viktoriia Tymonova is a Ukrainian artist who works with nostalgia and fiction in all their possible forms and manifestations. Viktoriia has a Master’s degree in journalism and now she is a photography student at University of Ostrava (Czech Republic). She participated in photography festivals like OFF Bratislava, Fotofestival Uničov and GETXOPHOTO.