The Ways of Folding Space & Time
It is void and non-void
and beyond the void
and is abiding in the heart.
There is (in It) neither meditation
nor meditator, nor the meditated,
nor the non-meditated.
Tejobindu Upanishad, st.10
The Ways of Folding Space & Time is a meditative photographic project exploring the fluid boundary between perception and reality, between presence and absence, between the visible and the invisible. Working with diptychs shot on a half-frame camera, I search for a visual form that can hold the trace of an altered state of consciousness—a fold in the fabric of space-time.
On February 24, 2022, the world changed. I was in Crimea, visiting family. Panic, fear, and uncertainty filled the air. I have loved ones on both sides of the border—in Ukraine and in Russia. Overwhelmed by the news and emotional tension, I began photographing in black and white as a way to anchor myself. After returning to Moscow, I continued to shoot—slowly, attentively, trying to look through the lens without judgment, expectation, or narrative.
This experience led me deeper into spiritual practice. I turned to transcendental meditation, to the philosophy of Advaita, and to the subtle art of inner stillness. In the yogic practice of Trataka, one fixes the gaze on a single point until the attention detaches from the object and turns inward. That is the space I seek to access with the camera—a fold where time ceases to be linear and the present becomes eternal.
The photographs are not documents; they are gestures. The real subject is the space between the frames, where silence and meaning accumulate. Through these diptychs, I try to point toward a state of non-duality—a field beyond division, where reality is not split into subject and object, good and bad, self and other.
This is a practice of seeing and being—an attempt to find stillness, presence, and perhaps even love, in the midst of fragmentation.
https://ivnv.ru/space-time
