Roman was born on the 7th of December 1982. We were students. Victoria took distance learning courses and for some time she lived with Roman at her parents’ place in our town Osipovichi. After graduation I was sent to Gomel, and in the fall of 1984 we all moved to the city. We worked and Roman went to kindergarten. His favourite activity at that age was creating installations from any material he could get his hands on: chairs, desk drawers, knitting threads, pots and pans, toys or whatever was left of them. If something disappeared in the house, Roman would have it. Victoria and Roman went to school together: she was a teacher, he was a student. After the Cherobyl nuclear disaster an international fund Children of Chernobyl was created in Belarus. In autumn and spring, younger students were sent to live and study in various sanatoriums and retreats around the Caucasian Riviera. Roman was always a good student, but neither for us nor for him it was the very important. Everyone thought of how to make their children spend more time in unpolluted regions. After his third year on the Children of Chernobyl program, Roman went on his first independent trip. He went to Italy. Children were allocated to Italian families, where they’d spend almost the entire summer. Roman was always lucky with the families he was sent to: wonderful people in incredible locations. The following two summers he spent in Italy. His last trip was to a family that owned a small private hotel in Sardinia, where they’d spend summers by the sea. There he met a woman from England who stayed at the hotel annually, spoke Italian and was a teacher of Russian language. She taught Roman English, and he taught her Russian.
This section has photos from early childhood, family holidays in Gelendzhik and Sochi and also a few photos that Roman took during his trip to Italy
