Bus stop, 2018 | tomafotograaf

Bus stop, 2018

This photo was taken at the end of July 2018. Then just started taking pictures with a camera. I had a group in Russian social media VKontakte and placed my photos there. Basically, I photographed what I saw around me - streets, nature, friends. That summer I visited my grandmother who lives in a Russian village (I live in the Netherlands), and then I saw the differences between these countries, I photographed a lot of the Russian post-Soviet places and asked my friend Ilya to be a model for my portrait shoots. 

There was a bus stop on the outskirts of the village, which we decided to climb once. We mostly climbed there in the evening, drank cider and ate chips from a local grocery shop. This stop was located in a kilometer distance from our homes. The bus stopped there at 6 am and 6 pm, the rest of the time there were no cars passing by. The thing of this bus stop is that it is situated on a hillock, that’s why you can very clearly see the nearest town Kolchugino from this point. The coolest was to climb this stop at night - there are no lanterns nearby, so the stars and lights of the city are clearly visible.  

 

 

One day I suddenly decided to do a portrait shoot. I wrote to Ilya in the evening that I wanted to photograph him tomorrow. The next day we started a photoset in my room, there were many posters that I collected from the “All Stars” magazine. Then I decided that it would be cool to try to redo the portrait that I had done in May (then I was photographing with my phone). For this photo, I needed view of the sky. The only place where Ilya would be on the level above the camera was this stop. We decided to go there. It was evening and the sky was completely clear, we were very lucky. As a result, Ilya climbed to the bus stop and we started our fashion shoot. We reproduced the picture we had taken a few months ago on the phone, and we took some more portraits. And then Ilya said: “That's it! I'm tired, let me sit." He sat down on the edge of the bus stop, then I took this magical shot that epitomizes my summer of 2018. This is also my favorite photograph now.

 

 

By the way, in 2020, there were pillars installed in front of the bus stop, blocking the view of the city. We no longer climbed to the stop, and unfortunately, I also don’t contact with Ilya anymore.

 

 

"Bus stop" has become a metonymy of youth and summer.