Biographie
Ekaterina Balaban graduated in sociology from the University of Perm (Russia) and the European University of St. Petersburg (degree validated by the Council of Europe and the University of Helsinki). For five years, she worked as a sociologist on different social communities (unemployed, suburban teenagers, homeless children, underage mothers) and then engaged in research on media audiences.
From 2016, she studied documentary photography. Graduate of DocDocDoc school and Rodchenko art school, she also attended Antoine d'Agata's master class organised by Void publishing house (Greece).
As a documentary artist and photographer, Ekaterina Balaban has been published in online magazines and participated in various exhibitions.
Présentation
The impetus for this project was the technological disaster in my hometown of Berezniki in the Urals. The city was built in Soviet times on the field of potash salts that remained from the ancient Perm Sea, and almost whole town stands on the mines. As the result of imperfections in the extraction technology, groundwater began to penetrate into the mines and dissolve the salt. The vaults of the mines began to collapse, and the city began to collapse with them. Huge sinkholes have formed in the ground in the city and its outskirts. Due to the sinkholes and movements in the crust, part of the city became an emergency zone. Cracks have appeared in many houses. People are relocated, houses are demolished — so the whole city is being slowly converted into empty spaces. I see in this catastrophe the response of nature and powerful poetry. The earth dissolved the salt with the help of groundwater, and the Ancient Sea seemed to wake up, get angry and decide to put man in his place. I was interested in the history of the Ancient Perm Sea and began to study the territory where it used to be. I immerse my photographs into the water of a salt lake left over from the Ancient Sea. Salt has the ability to crystallize, it is a time capsule (as well as photography). Salt creates its own imprint on top of the photo. It is my tribute to the sea and nature.