Julia — Ukraine / United States

From Visible / Invisible, 2017–ongoing

Having been introduced to Julia by a couple of my classmates, I knew that she was a second-year photography student. I will, however painfully, admit that I wasn't immediately taken in by her. I had originally found her quite excruciatingly plain and boring. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with her, but looking back, I wonder whether the age difference between us meant that we didn't immediately mesh.

After sitting with her in several classes, however, I began to realise that she was rather intriguing. We shared interests outside photography, and the more I got to know her, the more my first impression began to unravel.

Wearing her usual all black and the long 90s-style coat I had come to associate with her, Julia flicked back her blonde hair as she began to explain her ethnic background in an unmistakably All-American, Valley-girl accent. I found the contrast intriguing. Julia had been born in Ukraine and later lived in America; I had been born in America, yet spoke with a British accent. Before we had even begun discussing nationality and belonging, there was already something in the way we sounded that complicated the question of where either of us was from.

“Well…” she began, taking a drag of her cigarette and exhaling the smoke before continuing. “I was born in Ukraine, but lived in America for a while.”

Still speaking in that dark American drawl, with the casual, unbothered voice of a teenager, Julia explained that she held an American passport. She had become a US citizen alongside her mother and had lived with her stepfather in Pennsylvania. Yet when she spoke about Ukraine, she conjured an image of a former Eastern Bloc home she clearly still missed.

“It’s either you’re filthy rich, or you’re dirt poor back home,” she told me, arms folded across her chest, cigarette still in hand. Listening to her, there were moments when she sounded almost like one of those All-American heritage adverts, despite the place she was describing being somewhere else entirely.

We met for the photographs in mid-November, during what I would call one of the most bipolar days Britain's weather could give us. I had agreed to meet Julia at the nearby Tube station and began my journey beneath a crystal-clear sky, beautiful light azul blue framing brilliantly white, wispy clouds. Then, almost without warning, the weather turned violent. Rain came down with overwhelming force, fiercely cold and drenching.

After almost an hour, the darkened sky cracked. The rain abruptly ceased and warm, bright sunlight appeared. Throughout our interview and shoot, the weather continued to change like this intermittently, eventually forcing us to seek shelter while walking through the hulking estate before taking refuge in a nearby café.

Walking through the desolate, quiet estate in Camden, Alexandra Palace was not the first place that came to mind when I thought of the carefree, creative Julia. The jutting, hard-grey forms looked almost geological: decaying structures so geometric it seemed impossible to imagine that humans had designed them. The brutalist, industrial architecture reminded me of Victorian coal factories and workhouses, projecting an emptiness that seemed to carry the remnants of another economic and social order.

The surroundings also gave another dimension to what Julia had been telling me about Ukraine.

“Everyone lives in blocks like these but worse, where in London, you can live in a place like this and it'll be really nice inside.”

Her comparison returned our conversation to the economic divisions she associated with Ukraine. At the time of our conversation, the country was already several years into a national crisis following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The introduction of Russian forces and the conflict that followed had deepened political and social divisions, while Ukraine continued to struggle with economic instability. Wages were low while food and energy prices were rising, making everyday life increasingly difficult for many people trying to improve their circumstances.

Julia's description of housing belonged within that wider picture. In her telling, Ukrainian social housing could resemble the neglected government housing she had encountered in America: places associated with poverty and communities that appeared forgotten by wider society. Her account was blunt, sometimes sweeping, but it revealed something about the Ukraine she remembered and the way she understood the inequalities within it.

At one point, the light meter on my Pentax K1000 stopped working. I was incredibly frustrated, but I wasn't prepared to abandon the journey I had now embarked upon with this unexpectedly funny girl. Julia offered me her point-and-shoot camera so that I could finish the shoot.

She had only used a couple of frames on the film already inside it. Those photographs were little snapshots from Julia's life before coming to London. Rather than seeing them as an inconvenience, I became fascinated by the accident. I continued photographing on the same roll, allowing images of the life she had left behind to sit alongside the one she was now building here.

Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Julia where she preferred most: London, Pennsylvania or Ukraine.

An enormous grin spread across her childlike face.

“London.”

She hadn't particularly enjoyed her time in Pennsylvania, except for the friends she had made there, and she still spoke about the family she had left behind in Ukraine. America, meanwhile, had exposed her to what she described as religious zealotry and the growing support for Donald Trump, whose presidency disgusted her.

As our conversation drifted towards the political matters threatening to disrupt both our lives, Julia simply scoffed. She pulled a face somewhere between irritation and hilarious constipation, then smirked.

“Fuck Trump. He’s a cunt. I still can't believe he’s our president. He’s going to ruin everything.”