Afterword for the book "Fragments"

Marina Tarkovskaya

In this edition, the handwritten lines of poetry bring the author closer to the readers, make them more intimate as if copied personally for each of the album owners. And again, we read "I learned the grass, opening the notebook..." – "Eurydice" –  "And I dreamt about it, and I dream about it...".

And again, the photographic works that tell about the place of man in the universe and about his life purpose, about the feelings of people and about the state of nature related to them. The terrestrial and cosmic photographs, real as the reality and mystical like dreams, echoing the poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky permeated with love for life and with philosophical tension.

Two artistic worlds, two kinds of art, seemingly so far apart from each other, joined together naturally and organically in the pages of the album.

The parallel worlds, like the parallel lines that are mentioned in the epigraph at the beginning of the book, intersect not in the "ideal" but in a particular point that can hardly be called "infinitely remote".

Maybe, the place of intersection of two worlds and two arts is the soul? Yours, mine...

“Nikolai, thanks for letting me see these.  They're quite provocative as well as oddly beautiful.”

Vicky Goldberg (curator, historian, critic of world photography)
Commentary on the series “Breaking the Square”