Fairy Tale Of Russia

Frank Herfort captures the often melancholyc atmosphere of Russian interiors and everyday life, influenced by building materials, stirring up conflicting emotions, from the poetic to distressing.

In Frank Herfort’s project Time In Between – Fairy Tale Of Russia the whole world seems frozen in a condition of waiting.

The project is born during a stay in Russia two years ago, at a time when Herfort was beginning to develop an interest in the aesthetic aspect of public spaces. “In Western Europe everything is so neatly defined, so specific. A waiting room is a waiting room, an office is an office. In Russia, in contrast, rooms are open to interpretation, many-layered and not so prettified.

And I also noticed that there seem to be many more people just sitting around in them. None of them seems at first sight to know what they are doing there. I tried to integrate people like that into my pictures.”

Herfort makes intuitive use of the often melancholy atmosphere of a location, influenced by building materials such as marble and dark woods, in order to give emotional states and themes such as isolation and stagnation visible expression. He finds the Russian soul mirrored (in a double sense) in these images of the Russian urban population.