Irina Unruh, Where The Poplars Grow

Where The Poplars Grow

Irina Unruh

Publisher
Shift Books
Year
2024
ISBN
978-3-948174-25-5
Specifications
16.5 x 22 cm
118 pages
German / English
Essay by Viktoria Morasch, translation by Jon Cho-Polizzi
Design by Helena Melikov
Silver, Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2024/25
Winner, Belfast Photo Book Award 2025
Shortlisted, Lucie Photo Book Prize 2025

How does a German village end up in Kyrgyzstan? In the late summer of 1988 the artist, then nine years old, left the country with her family, at a time when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Two decades later she returned for the first time to Telman, her home village in the valley of the river Chu, which the older inhabitants still call Gruenfeld. Her documentary pictures speak of loss, of origin and of the search for identity, and along the path of the history of the Germans of Russia she tells her own story of flight, displacement and home.

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