“I Want to Believe” is a photobook exploring whether we can trust an image and how meanings are formed around visual representations. This three-part work combines the mediums of photography, text, and the book itself. The format of a pseudoscientific experiment serves as a lens through which to examine the emerging cult of modern psychotherapy in Russia.

The author explores the perception of her inner state through photographs, addressing not the viewer or art historians, but psychologists—and in the course of her search for specialists, she encounters the blurred professional boundaries in the field of psychological counseling. Search results are dominated by “pseudo-specialists” with short-term training courses and dubious methods, who often combine psychology with esotericism, numerology, and other astropsychological “miracles.” An experiment attempting to determine a photographer’s state of mind based on photographs goes beyond the scope of professional psychology but allows us to view its methods through the lens of art.

2026, self-published, inkjet print, hand-bound

print run: 60 copies / 10 demonstration copies

size: 13 × 22 cm, 104 pages

price: 3,500 rubles; shipping is charged separately