When my Grandma came to Moscow, no one had refrigerators in their apartment yet. Groceries were bought little by little and hung outside the window in a net bag (avoska). During her lifetime, as she said, progress had gone very far— every apartment now had not only a refrigerator but even a computer.

She was very surprised by all this. My Grandma had a hard time getting used to the changes, and she never learned how to use a computer. For me, this progress is clearly visible in the preserved photos. The portrait on the plate, where Grandma is very young, belongs to the time when shooting was a special event, for which they prepared in advance. But Grandma also caught the time when the ability to take instant photos became available. Here my Grandma was photographed by my mother using a fashionable Polaroid camera while she was working in the vegetable garden.