Vera`s Season

Minsk-based photographer Tatsiana Tkachova was in Volozhin, Belarus in 2017 when she saw an elegant woman in a bright dress. So began her friendship with Vera, now 92.

 

Tkachova took 27 portraits for Vera’s Seasons, telling Vera’s story and that of the region. The last portrait is of the dress Vera will wear at her funeral.

 

 

The fur-lined overcoat that Vera bought as an investment to safeguard her money after the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991.

 

 

This is the dress Vera’s future daughter-in-law wore when going out on dates with Vera’s son.

 

 

This dress was a present to Vera from her daughter-in-law. Vera housed her son and his new wife and helped them raise their first child.

 

Vera wearing a dress that was given to her by a friend who knew that purple is her favourite colour.

 

 

Vera wearing the flower-pattern headscarf she had on when she first met her future husband, Sergey. She would wear it while walking about town with a friend and Sergey later told her that he always noticed it.

 

 

This is the pleated dress Vera gave to her daughter-in-law after the death of the younger woman’s mother.

 

Vera bought this dress for her daughter, so that the money would not be lost after the collapse of the USSR. When her daughter got married Vera decided to keep the dress.

 

Vera likes to wear beautiful long skirts and blouses.

 

 

Vera in her daughter’s raincoat.

 

 

The blue dress, white scarf and sensible shoes that Vera has set aside to clothe her at her funeral, ‘so that in the next world she might be comfortable and beautiful’.

 

Photograph: All images copyright: Tatsiana Tkachova.