Interview – Frozen Dreams by Fisheye Magazine

1 – What is the origin of this project?

I was preparing a trip to Lake Baikal in 2018. Going there in March guaranteed that the lake would be frozen solid enough to walk, drive, and live on its surface without any real risk.

Traveling that far means carefully choosing your destination to maximize the potential for creating strong images across one or several themes.
While scouting locations online, I glimpsed in some images abstract forms locked within the thick ice. That’s when I envisioned the series.
I sensed there was potential for anyone who could search out shapes and compositions deep within the frozen layers—much like gazing into a cloudy sky and finding images.
Let’s just say I hoped.

A few months later, after two flights and fifteen hours in a 4x4, I reached the shores of the lake where I would spend twelve days.
Relief: as the wheels of the old 4x4 minibus screeched across the dark ice, I discovered random white lines... I crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t snow over them.
Snow came on the sixth day.
I had five days to develop the series before the landscape transformed into a different, all-white, even more minimalist and equally captivating world.

2 – How would you describe Lake Baikal to someone who has never been there?

Lake Baikal is not just “the world's largest reserve of liquid freshwater.”

In winter, Baikal feels like another planet—frozen, lifeless at first glance, though beneath the one-meter-thick ice, a vast aquatic ecosystem thrives, plunging down 1,600 meters.
Experiencing Baikal is like leaving Earth (solid Earth, at least) and entering a place where everything feels infinite: beneath your feet, endless water; above your head, a cloudless sky; around you, a 360° horizon.
The ground—whether black or white—vanishes under your thick cold-weather boots (-35°C), and you find yourself in a dizzying elsewhere, another dimension, another world.

3 – Tell us about the title. What are these "frozen dreams"?

Photographing inside the frozen layers of the lake means moving slowly, just a few meters per hour, stepping forward at a crawl, eyes scanning the transparent ground.
You forget time.
Camera and tripod in hand, you search for strange forms that could carry meaning for you—and for whoever might one day see your images.

It’s a journey into an in-between space: abstract, yet tied to the physical reality of this surreal terrain and to our own human perception.
The mind drifts between reality and abstraction, between the present moment and other thoughts.
It escapes, then returns.
And sometimes, without warning, the magic happens—your mind working on its own—and suddenly, right there, something appears worth capturing.

In that sense, I was constantly wavering between reality and dream, intentionally losing my footing.

And then, there’s the ephemeral nature of these mesmerizing natural forms: fleeting, like a winter's dream.
Looking at an image from Frozen Dreams, even I find myself drifting, telling a story—personal, imagined, uncontrollable—just like in a dream.

4 – In what ways did the snow and ice influence your photographic practice?

With the right gear (cameras and batteries resistant to extreme cold, proper clothing, and so on), the cold itself becomes manageable...
But it’s the treacherous ice and the cutting wind, added to the cold, that make developing a true photographic series a challenge.

The wind freezes your face, your eyes, your hands—and even your mind!
You have to push through, shooting again and again, day and night, striving for that perfect image before moving just a few meters and starting over.
The slippery ice makes both body and camera unstable, so if you want crisp images, you need a solid setup and precise settings.

But in the end, it’s a game.
A total focus, spotting potential, creating an image in these harsh conditions with a frozen mind and frozen hands—it’s a game, a challenge, pure exhilaration.

5 – Is there an image from the series that is particularly meaningful to you, and that you’d like to comment on?

The very first image shown above.

The windstorms had swept away the snow, revealing the dark, frozen depths of the lake—depths that aren't truly dark at all, since life teems beneath them.
The delicate flakes of snow seem to wrestle with the solid, dense ice.
The snow becomes unrecognizable.
The ice becomes unrecognizable.

In this image, I see the last page of an open book.
An ending, like any other.
An ending that has no end.

6 – Frozen Dreams in six words?

A FROZEN DIVE INTO FIGURATIVE ABSTRACTION.