When the Birch Leaves Shine (2008 — ongoing)

Betyung is a small village in the Vilyuy region of Yakutia, 565 kilometers from Yakutsk and 14 kilometers from the federal highway. About 400 people live here. In spring and autumn, rain often makes the dirt road to the village difficult or impossible to pass. Since 2007, I have been photographing life in Betyung through the story of my grandmother Irina and her elder sister Anna.

Irina and Anna were born sisters, but were raised in different families. In the early 1950s, Irina was adopted by the Prokopyev family after a local healer advised them to take a child from another lineage so that their own children might survive. Anna remained Anna Dmitrievna Vasilieva; Irina became Irina Petrovna Prokopyeva. Though their lives separated, the sisters always knew they belonged to one another.

Anna spent most of her life in hard physical labor, milking cows from childhood. After a bull injured her leg, she was left with a permanent limp. She never married and lived with her brother Nikolai. Irina studied at a pedagogical school, became a teacher of Russian language, married, gave birth to a son, and later raised him alone.

In the early 1960s, Irina fell seriously ill. After months in hospital, she was taken in secret to the Yakut healer Nikon Alekseyevich Vasilyev, at a time when traditional healers and shamans were persecuted by the Soviet state. Nikon treated her and later asked her to return in summer, when the birch leaves shine — the moment when, he believed, medicinal herbs reach their greatest strength. In 1980, he recognized Irina’s connection to nature and passed on to her his knowledge of healing plants. This became her lifelong path.

After Nikolai’s death in the late 1990s, Anna invited Irina to live with her. The sisters shared one house: Anna cared for the cows, while Irina kept the home and gathered medicinal herbs. They often argued, sometimes even cooking separate soups for lunch, but their lives remained bound together by work, memory, and kinship.

Anna died in 2017. Since then, Irina has lived alone. The family considered moving her to Yakutsk, but she refused. She feels more alive in the village, close to the forest, the fields, and the plants she knows.

When I visit Betyung, I sleep in the room that once belonged to Anna. Sometimes my grandmother asks whether I have seen Anna in my dreams. For a long time I had not. Then one day she appeared — sitting silently, warm and glowing in the sun. “That means she is well, ” my grandmother told me.

This project is about two sisters, one village, and a way of life that continues through memory, care, labor, and the fragile knowledge passed between generations.