The rapid population decline in Russia was for me, in 2006 and later in 2010, the pretext for a lonely and introspective voyage across this immense Russian desert. Indeed, in 2050, Russia is expected to have lost a third of its current population. The largest country on the planet will be inhabited by fewer than one hundred million people. Le désert russe is a photographic fiction, a personal work that uses snowy Russia as a setting and a foretold demographic disaster as pretext. My approach is both poetic and documentary. My work blends personal impressions with visual identity in unknown areas. With my photographs, I hope to open the doors onto a dreamlike world suggested by the solitude, the population desert, and the harsh climate. A region at the edge of the world inhabited by strange animals, empty landscapes where man is often but a ghostly apparition.
Ljubisa Danilovic
