Growing up, I lived in Moscow, in one of those neighborhoods everyone said you had to escape if you wanted to make something of yourself. Stay here and you'll either end up an alcoholic or join the working class, in the worst sense of the word. But I loved my neighborhood. It was so green, and right by our building I had my very own hideout. I still remember how the morning sun would come through the tree branches into the apartment windows and wake the whole family.
Then came a series of other apartments. Each window made me feel differently about life: ground-floor shadows, tower-block heights, trees, then nothing but concrete. I can still picture exactly what I saw from the window in every one of those periods.
In 2022, like many Russians, I left my country. I left behind another window that had become part of home. I'll never forget the one in Tbilisi, Georgia. The window I stared through in desperation, trying to find a corner of this foreign place to call my own.
Tbilisi, Georgia
Batumi, Georgia
It felt like all the old foundations had collapsed. Familiar skylines gave way to different rooftops, different buildings, and mountains in the distance. I had to put myself back together from scratch.
A year later we moved to Belgrade and felt new, strong, alive, ready for whatever came next. For three years we have been building a life here, growing and making mistakes, crying and celebrating. Living a real life.
Right now, as sometimes happens, I'm going through a hard stretch. Plans fell apart and everything went back to zero. I live with a view from the window I don't like. I feel like I don't belong to it, because inside I am stronger, wiser, more than what I see each morning.
And this gives me a clarity: your circumstances, your place, your view from the window do not define you. You can be a great screenwriter, a writer, a physicist, from any window. Your worth is always with you, inside. And only you can set it free, by changing, with your own hands, what you will see from your next window.
Cverna Krst, Belgrade, Serbia
Kralja Milana str, Belgrade, Serbia
This project is about that.
Upload your window, and what you're living through while you look at it
