After six years spent in Japan, Franco-Russian photographer , Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko, decided to make an epic out of his travel back to Europe. From this two month-long journey, The Long Way Home was born, a visual travel notebook.
Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko was born in Russia and moved to France when he was still a child. His youth, spent of both sides of the iron curtain, was marked by a wish to find common grounds between cultures. “I am deeply interested in the notions of origin and being foreign. Growing up as an outsider in a country made my quest to find links between people a permanent one”, the photographer explains. When he left Tokyo, the desire to explore new territories was too strong, and his way home became a long journey through Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Mongolia, Siberia and, finally, Moscow. “The result is a book filled with 50 photos, selected out of the 6000 I took during this adventure”, Gueorgui adds. A travel diary where encounters and landscapes blend together, like echoes of this trip following the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian railways.
A “Japanised” photography
A certain authenticity emerges from the photographer’s journey. Portraits and views take us away, with a refreshing spontaneity. Gueorgui always favoured feelings over technique, but the years spent in Japan influenced his way of thinking images. “There is a strong “snapshot” culture, over there. Lots of Japanese people like photographing their daily lives, their close friends, without always paying attention to the technical side of it”, he explains. Therefore, Gueorgui used his instinct to capture his Eurasian trek. Landscapes along the rails moved him, and short-lived encounters as well. His portraits are tributes to the world travellers he met in youth hostels during his travel. In The Long Way Home, the image is direct, taken in action, driven by emotion. Light is natural, reliable witness illuminating those visuel memories. “To me, daily life – and its spaces and characters – is far more theatrical and poetic than staged pictures taken in studios”, the photographer concludes.
© Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko
