When Sharjah Called My Name

When I arrived in Sharjah, the photographs that had spent years following me through small Russian towns suddenly had a place of their own. Russia at Dusk was presented in a dedicated exhibition space, and I soon discovered that people were not simply walking past. They stopped. They looked. Some stayed for quite a long time. Then came the questions, and I found myself telling the same stories again, only now to people who had never seen the places where those photographs were made.

There is something strange about this moment in a photographer's life. You spend years making pictures in places where almost nobody knows what you are doing, and then one day you stand beside them while hundreds of strangers decide whether they mean something to them. I gave interviews, spoke about the people in the photographs and about the long process behind the series. And slowly I understood that the work no longer belonged entirely to me. The viewers had begun to make their own stories from it.

The festival was not only an exhibition but also a competition, and when Russia at Dusk was announced as the winner, I was, of course, happy. But the real surprise had already happened. The photographs had travelled far from the small Russian towns where they were made and had found people willing to stop and look at them. At the closing gala, Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed bin Sultan Al Qasimi personally presented the award and congratulated me.

I think this is what I brought home from Sharjah. Not simply the award, though I am deeply grateful for it, and not even the exhibition itself. It was the feeling that the work had found its audience. A photographer can spend years wondering whether he should continue, whether the pictures are worth making, whether anyone is really looking. Then, unexpectedly, a room fills with people, and they stand quietly in front of your photographs. And you understand that, yes, perhaps it is worth continuing.