Yuliana Paranko

Nightmares are among many side effects which one of the antidepressants I am taking has. For having a day without a dark hole and for a possibility to have a deep sleep every night I am going to bed not knowing what I will see next. Many of my mornings I start with telling myself: It was just a dream, it is not true. Some nights I just call “bad dreams”. My gradation of nightmares changed. Bad dreams became a term for something unpleasant, but still not so horrible.

One morning my partner asked me: “Did you have bad dreams?”. “I was killed”, - I have answered.

I have started to take antidepressants after half a year since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I am escaping the horror of the day and agreeing for the horror of the night. And I am still choosing it. I want to remember this period of my life and document it for future me. This is one part of a bigger project on depression.

*Antidepressants may or may not have specific side effects for a specific person.

Techniques:
- black and white film soaked in the antidepressants,
- cyanotype, imprint of empty blister packs from antidepressants,
- instax mini,
- antidepressants under a microscope.

We create landscapes, we photograph nature. But what if trees, rivers and plants could be more involved in creating the final portrait of themselves?

Using experimental techniques, I involve nature in co-creation. I have soaked rolls of film into the water of rivers, swamps, lakes, seas and quarries in various places in Ukraine and Germany. I added leaves, twigs and sand to the water. I shot these films in the same places where the water came from. I left some prints in the soil and swamps in the area where I photographed them, and a few months later I scanned the result.

Nature has left unique prints that will never be the same again. Nature participated in the creation of these works. It is also an effect and a model, the print and the chemical part. Nature can create and destroy, it has amazing colors and it can erase colors.

As a child I was afraid to put my feet in the water because I couldn't feel the bottom. It became a challenge for me as an adult to overcome the fear of the unknown, the fear of the void around me.

With the arrival of emptiness within me, the water stopped scaring me. I put my feet down, hoping to touch the bottom, to feel how I could push off. But I can't dive, I just float on the water, put my ears down and listen to the emptiness with joy.

Water heals, sometimes the body, but in my case, it heals what is inside. Water is also fascinating. Sometimes because you can't see anything in the pond. And sometimes you are fascinated by how big the world is underneath this layer.