Ilya Batrakov. MOROK
SOYA PRESS 2022
184 pages
Size: 180×240mm (7.1×9.4 in.)
Hard cover
BLOCK: Sappi Magno Volume 150g/m2
COVER: white color Letterpress print on Zanders Efalin Smooth Black 120g/m2 with white silk-screen print on endpapper 350lpi LE-UV offset print
EDITION: 500
www.batrakovilya.com
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Ilya worked on this project for more than 10 years, and Ilya and I worked on this book for two difficult years, thanks to the editor Daria Borisenko, and so the translator and English editor Trivis Turner, as well as our friend and partner Scanner Operator Artem Kudryashov. And to all our friends who helped with the release of this great work. About the “Morok” project: “Since childhood, when I’m sick, I see war in my dreams, and fragments of reality are woven into these dreams, full of anxiety and chaos. In those dreams, there are two recurring elements. First, my father and I defend a small plot of land, and our weapons stop working. Second, the familiar space transforms into an alien, scorched, mangled land covered with trash, all the traces of the past erased from its surface.
The project started the moment I saw forest rangers’ marks on trees in the forest where I grew up and with which I developed a special connection through my mother. The trees were to be cut, and I decided to capture the forest with my camera. 15 years later, almost nothing has remained of the forest. They started cutting it down to clear a power line. Later on, they kept doing it to fight the bark beetle. And then, the wind came and knocked down what had been thoughtlessly exposed by man.
“Morok” is an attempt to put together materials capturing places that are meaningful to me before they vanish.