Kristina 18

Kristina Podobed is a photographer born in Odesa in 1994. She began her artistic practice in 2011. Her work explores themes of corporeality, naturalness and vulnerability, capturing intimate, unstaged moments. Combining emotional closeness with a documentary sensibility, she creates images that feel both open and deeply personal. Kristina’s photographs are often compared to poetry — they evoke emotion, immerse the viewer in inner experience and suggest new ways of seeing.

Kristina 18 is a book about the end of an important chapter in life. About a time that once felt endless but now survives only in fragments of memory. The number 18 carries a double meaning here: it marks both the age at which the artist first picked up a camera and the day of her birth. The book tells the story of the people and places that shaped Kristina’s life in Ukraine, of a world that once seemed permanent. Some spaces lose their meaning without the people who filled them, while certain faces remain vivid even after their context disappears. Kristina 18 is a quiet farewell — an attempt to return to one’s origins before finally letting go. The book is not only about the past, but about echoes: the feelings, moments and absences that continue to shape us.