Irina Unruh, Where The Poplars Grow

How does a German village get to Kyrgyzstan? Before the autumn of 1988, Irina Unruh, who was nine years old, left Kyrgyzstan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, with her family. Two decades later, she returned to Telman, her home village, which lies in the valley of the Chui River and is called Grünfeld by the older residents. Like its surrounding ones, the village was founded in the 1920s by refugee German Mennonites. Unruh tells her personal story of escape, displacement and home on the path of the history of Russian-Germans. Unruh’s photographic journey reveals the secrets that have been hidden for generations, the memories that are loudly remembered, and those that are only a whisper. Her photographs capture vast landscapes, intimate family moments, and friendly interactions. “Where The Poplars Grow” combines contemporary history and fragments of a family album. As you turn the pages, you become aware of collective and individual memories and their gaps. Unruh’s desire to track down childhood memories and record them photographically raises many questions about political and family entanglements, language, and how a German village found its way to Kyrgyzstan.

“Irina’s pictures take us into a story from the past, then into the present and back again. It is a story about identity, migration, immigration and, above all, family. The pictures, both from archives and from the present, contain many lives, many questions, much tenderness and beauty.
“Irina’s pictures take us into a story from the past, then into the present and back again. It is a story about identity, migration, immigration and, above all, family. The pictures, both from archives and from the present, contain many lives, many questions, much tenderness and beauty.
The design of the book is a faithful echo and reinforcement of the memories captured in the photographs that have been lost. It is a poem, it is a memoir, it is a secret. It’s a book that reminds us that all too often, ‘The past is as unpredictable as the future’.”
– Sarah Leen Co-founder of the Visual Thinking Collective and former Director of Photography at National Geographic Magazine