Svetlana Volodina

I've got three stones of imagination: light, human soul, nature. Sometimes I fling them so far away that in the way my whole essence reveals and I do not know - is it my way to the stone or my way to myself.

Born on a rainy summer day, smelling of wet steppes - June 22, 1983. Educational background - lawyer. After one year of employment in accordance with received degree, moved to St. Petersburg. Prior to departure, I devoted almost all my free time to the enduring meditative - in the spirit of Zen - walks in the steppe with my camera. That brought me to St. Petersburg school of photography and later to Faculty of photojournalism.

Being a student of Faculty of photojournalism I had to make a series of photos on social issues, that’s how I came to The orphanage (for children with severe mental and physical disabilities) â„– 4 in Pavlovsk, St. Petersburg (2008), where my personal point of reference as a photojournalist or a Person with a camera begins. I became a volunteer of "Plantain" NGO, which brought essential creative impact on my future life. During my studies I worked with a variety of Russian print media: "Rossiyskaya Gazeta", "Izvestiya", "Business Petersburg".After graduation from the Faculty I worked as a freelance photographer, made projects with various NGOs in different fields from ecology to support for homeless people, HIV-positive children up to three years, Krishna and Zen Buddhists.

My biographical path is closely related to my way in photography, and my camera has always been a means of expressing my personal involvement in life. After a day when my photographic equipment had been stolen a period of reconsideration and traveling began. For three months I was hitchhiking on the roads of Russia, China and Kazakhstan, as a result - better understanding of my own heart and the person near me. In mid-2011 I met my future husband from Denmark, where I subsequently moved. In Copenhagen I worked with mentally disabled people in "Ungt Sind" - drop-in place where everyone can come and spend a day and be oneself out of any diagnoses. At the same time, I work as a photographer and a volunteer for “Offside” organization, which helps homeless as well as participate in various school activities as a photographer and an organizer of the projects in the school Oehlenschlægersgades Skole, Denmark, Copenhagen.

In  2011 I started an independent international project about leprosy disease, where taboos and stereotypes are opposed to people who have open minds and unbounded view of life.

 Currently collaborating with NGOs "Plantain", St. Petersburg, with hospices and with various NGO in Denmark, India and Ethiopia, working with people with mental, physical features, school children, immigrants, and those who have been abandoned by society - people with leprosy disease, transsexuals, transvestites, and people on the verge of death.