A sentry birch on the Luga River. October 2005

This image was produced in the Luga River basin prior to its subsequent radical transformation. At the time of recording, the landscape retained a complex natural and cultural structure shaped by long-term interaction between river systems, forested terrain, and human presence. These territories were later destroyed as a result of extensive industrial clear-cutting, rendering the present material an archival record of a lost spatial condition. From a cultural perspective, such landscapes may be associated with the southern, inhabited horizon of the mythological geography of the Kalevala — not as a visual illustration of the epic, but as a plausible environmental context from which it could emerge.

Large-format film photography allows the recording of the material structure of space at a moment preceding its disappearance — terrain, vegetation, water surfaces, and light conditions. This file constitutes a documentary visual record of a landscape that no longer exists in the form documented here.