The project “Marks of Kinship” addresses the materiality of memory — the creases and stains, scratches and chips that gradually appear on every photograph. The idea arose from a paradox the artist encountered while working on photo stories for the media: family archives are cherished as anchors for remembrance; albums and scattered photographs are looked through, handled, spoken told about — often without regard for the wear these images undergo. Gradually moving away from the content of the photographs and the stories attached to them, she began using the camera to explore the material foundation of these images, and later — the foundations of other prints she came across at flea markets. The histories connected to them have already been lost or forgotten, yet the photographs persist as material objects bearing their own damage and traces of loss.

Some marks are immediately visible, while others appear only under close, attentive scrutiny — when a photograph is held at a certain angle — and vanish again during scanning. With the help ofThrough the camera and macro photography, both become visible, reminding us of the capacity of photography and optical mechanisms to reveal what is hidden or overlooked. The series shifts attention not only to the surfaces but to the very structure of the image, transforming its content, turning it into abstraction, and likening it to scientific imaging under a microscope.

Text by Olga Annanurova, cultural theorist and photography researcher

From November 12 to December 19, PENNLAB Gallery presents Kristina Syrchikova’s solo exhibition Marks of Kinship, which explores the materiality of photography and its return to the foreground.

Syrchikova began working on Marks of Kinship in 2019 while photographing a story for a media outlet. The subject of the story took several stacks of photographs from a shelf in an old Soviet-era wardrobe (shkaf). Her way of handling them was entirely at odds with the principles of museum preservation: the photographs were heavily damaged, yet they seemed alive because they were constantly touched, revisited, and shown to others. Every crack testified to an active and intimate relationship with the family archive. After this encounter, Syrchikova began searching family photographs for scratches, foxing, tears, and other traces of damage, and photographing them.

Such damage often obscures the people depicted in the photographs, leading many owners to turn to retouchers who restore family images. Following the same logic, the artist sent the same damaged photograph of her grandmother to several retouchers in an attempt to imagine what she might have looked like in her youth. Can such a “conditionally accurate” reconstruction of missing visual information produce a new understanding of the past?

The exhibition design was developed by architect Dmitry Khramov. The photographs “acquire a body,” occupying the entire gallery and immersing the viewer in a space of memory and tactile experience. The three installations flow into one another, approaching the theme of oblivion from different perspectives.