© Photography by Rhea Catada

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Having lived in three different countries and at least 11 different cities, I have almost gotten used to the idea that people and places are ephemeral things in my life. I arrive, I live somewhere for a while, I meet people and love some of them, and then I leave. They go on with their lives and I go on with mine, and all we have left are empty rooms and the ghost of memories that used to occupy these spaces.

These photographs were taken in Kyiv and Krakow. I shot them on a second-hand 1980s film camera I bought in Kyiv, where film photography is still very much alive. There is something about film that makes sense to me for photographs like these. You press the shutter and then the moment is gone. You cannot look at it again, not yet. You carry the film around with you, not knowing exactly what you managed to keep, until much later when the photographs come back. Which, I suppose, is one way of describing memory too.

Photographed in the Spring of 2026.

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© Rhea Catada