Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila

Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography

by Nadia Sablin, Sandra S. Phillips (Foreword)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin’s aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived—chopping wood to heat the house, bringing water from the well, planting potatoes, and making their own clothes. Sablin’s lyrical and evocative photographs, taken over seven summers, capture the small details and daily rituals of her aunts’ surprisingly colorful and dreamlike days, taking us not only to another country but to another time. Alevtina and Ludmila, now in their seventies, seem both old and young, as if time itself was as seamless and cyclical as their routines—working on puzzles, sewing curtains, tatting lace, picking berries, repairing fences—and as full of the same subtle mysteries. Sablin collaborated with her aunts to recreate scenes she remembered from her childhood and to make new images of the patterns of their days. In these photographs, Sablin combines observation and invention, biography and autobiography, to tell the stories of her aunts’ life together, and in the process, quilts together a thoughtful meditation on memory, aging, and belonging.

88 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2015

Reviews

[Duke Press]

"What shines through most strongly in the book is [Sablin's] admiration for these indomitable women. The book moves effortlessly from close observation of objects–two bowls of borscht on a faded tabletop, sheets drying in a shed– to intimate documentary–an aunt bent in concentration over a crossword–and from dark interiors to almost other worldly daylight. ... Aunties is an elegy for a way of life as much as a loving homage to the women who embody it." — Sean O'Hagan The Guardian
11/06/2015

"[A] book made out of pure love. Sablin, who lives in Brooklyn, visits her two elderly aunties every summer, capturing their simple, self sufficient life in a wooden house among woodland in rural Russia. Sablin’s biggest influence is magical realist fiction and the images move effortlessly between the real and the almost enchanted." — Sean O'Hagan The Guardian Best Photography Books of 2015
12/06/2015

"Sablin's lyrical photos, taken over several summers, capture the small details and rituals of her aunts' dreamlike days. She quilts together a thoughtful meditation on memory, ageing, and belonging." — Karen Kelner The Independent on Sunday
12/20/2015