‘War’ and ‘Waiting’ begin with the same letter. I’m not a soldier’s mother, neither am I a soldier’s wife. But I know what it feels like when loved one go to war. The man I love, who is a journalist, went to Lybia to cover the war. He stayed there for a few months. He was on the frontline. War became a very personal matter for me. It became part of my life, of my thoughts and soul. For a while it dominated me. I spent my time waiting, worrying, counting days and hoping for the best. I couldn’t unglue myself from thinking about the conflict zone, I spent days following the news and photos. I began to have dreams about war. I wished I had been there. Every single day I was hoping to get a message from my friend saying that he was alive and well. Sometimes I felt I was in the conflict zone – not my peaceful city – where real life was going on. I felt like a character in a play or simply a puppet. Everything around me seemed artificial. War was being fought out there. And everything was changing: the country and people in distant places, the global political situation… I was changing, too. Now it’s all over. The loved one came back, alive and well. But I think that war left a stigma on me, a kind of incurable deformity.
Maria Pleshkova is a Russian Freelance photographer, she works with the ITAR-TASS, Demotix and Corbis photography agencies. Born in 1986 in Moscow she later studied Photojournalism in Moscow State University and in School of Visual Arts (Moscow). Now mostly focused on making personal documentary projects. In 2012 she received the Gold Prize in the Nature & Environment News Stories category and a Bronze Prize in the Art Culture & Entertainment News Stories category of the China International Press Photo Contest
