Karaim Cemetery 2001

Arsen Savadov made this photograph, Karaim Cemetery, capturing a landscape in soft autumnal tones. I can imagine him scouting for a location and coming across this dilapidated place, where broken headstones and fallen leaves fill the foreground. What must it have been like to wander around this ruin? The artist frames this place of forgotten souls, and the sun barely pierces through the high trees. It reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting of graveyards, and like him, Savadov captures a Romantic sensibility, an immersion in nature as a mirror of our emotions. The ground is covered in fallen leaves, like a shroud, and the toppled headstones evoke a sense of time passing and memories fading. I wonder what it felt like to be there and how he might have sought to capture the stillness and solemnity of the scene? As an artist I find myself constantly looking for ways to engage with a specific place or situation and I appreciate his interest in how landscapes can reflect our emotional states.