Selfportraits on film (Patreon)

I look at these photographs and think: God, who is this woman?)))

I took these selfportraits in the summer of 2024. So it’s only been a little over two years, but internally it feels like some completely different reality.

I barely remember myself like this.

And it’s so interesting to look at her now and wonder - could that Yuliia have ever imagined where she would be just a couple of years later? With whom? In what country? What would she be feeling? What would she call home?

I don’t think she had a fucking clue.)))

Although life in general is such a strange thing. When you’re little, you can only dream within the limits of the world you already know. Your family, your city, the people around you. If I could travel back in time now, appear in front of my five-year-old self and say: “Yulichka, sweetheart, you’re going to travel all over the world, become a photographer, take self-portraits, marry an American, live in America, and you’ll be able to eat as much ice cream as you want - every single day if you feel like it, even the whole damn tub...”

I think out of everything on that list, she’d be most impressed by the ice cream.)))

But the most interesting part is that I don’t even need to go all the way back to childhood to feel this way.

Looking at myself just two or three years ago is enough.

And actually, this didn’t start two or three years ago.

Ever since I became an adult and started making my own decisions about my life, it feels like my life has been changing completely every couple of years. One version of it barely has time to become familiar before somehow I’m already somewhere else, doing something else, surrounded by different people, wanting different things, living a life that the previous version of me probably couldn’t have imagined.

And somehow it feels like this process is only accelerating. Almost like it’s happening in geometric progression. Every new chapter takes me even further from what I once thought my life would look like.

Some things I dreamed about actually happened. Some happened in completely different ways than I expected. But the strangest part is how many of the most important things in my life weren’t even things I knew I could dream about.

And now I’m so curious about how I’ll look at myself today three years from now. At this current, thirty-year-old Yuliia. What will feel distant by then? What will change? Where will I be? What will become important? What will I laugh about when I remember the things I’m worried about today?

And the most interesting part is that I can’t even properly dream about it.

Because judging by my experience so far, the most interesting things in my life seem to happen somewhere beyond what I’m even capable of imagining.

I wonder what life has prepared for me next 🥰