Emmi and the orchids

Kristina Shakht shares the healing story behind her photo essay Emmi and the Orchids – a “comforting” study of the female body captured from her Brooklyn bedroom

Though she lived in America as a child, Kristina Shakht spent the majority of her formative years in Saint Petersburg, Russia – her mother’s hometown. It was here that she fell in love with image-making, playing photographer with “little cheap toy cameras” her parents bought her and enrolling in an arts school at just four. But Shakht never felt at ease as a female artist in Russia and, after some soul-searching in Berlin, the photographer returned to US soil five years ago, settling in New York City. 

Here, in America’s teeming cultural epicenter, and one of the country’s most badly affected areas by the pandemic, Shakht photographed her intimate Polaroid series Emmi and the Orchids from the confines of her “tiny” Brooklyn apartment. A soft and loving study of the female body, the images capture a model, Emmi Shockley, in a series of black and white portraits of simplicity and warmth. But the photo essay has come to represent more than just a creative project for Shakht: “As a sexual assault survivor, for me this story is a way to heal and reframe my experience”.