In the summer of 2010, forest fires of unprecedented scale raged in central Russia. The Nizhny Novgorod region turned out to be one of the most affected regions. The combustion zone stretched for hundreds of thousands of hectares and spread over eleven settlements.

On Thursday, 29 July 2010, the village of Verkhnyaya Vereya, formerly called Giblovka, burned down entirely as a result of forest fires due to its proximity to dense forests and swampy peat bogs.

Those disastrous events, their prerequisites and consequences became the subject of research by Alexey Pavlov, a participant of the Vyksa Artist-in-Residence programme, who went to Verkhnyaya Vereya in search of evidence and archival materials. He interviewed the witnesses of the fires and used their memories in his work. Rethinking their stories, the artist attempts to transfer the viewers in time and space and bring them closer to the experiences of the witnesses. In his work, Pavlov reaches beyond traditional documentary photography by expanding the range of techniques and turning to collage, digital overlay and photographic reconstruction.

The exhibition will also showcase archival materials and artefacts that were used by Alexey in the course of researching for the project.