The project "Water Dreams" was originally conceived as a photography project. The goal of the project is to bring together non-professionals, members of the Yara Dolls community. Through the maker's doll they sought to show a place of power — where there is natural water. Not simply to show the body of water, but to reflect a legend, tale, or their personal memories associated with that place. Project author: Svetlana Smirnova.
Svetlana Smirnova's work "Korozhechna River and Popov Stream"
Lyudmila Nikiforova's work "Ai River"
Valentina Ponomareva's work "Sviridov Pond"
Irina Polushina's work "Lake Onega"
Water is life. Everyone has known this phrase since childhood. People have always settled primarily by water. The Russian thinker Lev Ilyich Mechnikov (1838–1888) called river civilizations the first stage of human development and believed that the key condition for the emergence of culture and civilization was water, especially flowing water, i.e., rivers.
It is natural for people to animate natural objects, endowing them with their own will and character. Myths and legends, folk tales and literary works were created about rivers and seas. The tendency to "humanize" nature is characteristic of the art of the Romantic era, but it can be seen as a timeless artistic device. Bodies of water become not just a background but, essentially, full-fledged characters in a wide variety of works — A. S. Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" (the Neva), M. Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows the Don", V. Shishkov's "The Gloomy River" (Lower Tunguska), A. Ivanov's "Gold of the Rebellion, or Down the River of Narrows" (Chusovaya), etc.
The image of a body of water can be not only personified but also broadly philosophical. Thus, the image of the "river of life" is presented by A. I. Kuprin in the eponymous work and in the story "Melyuzga" (1907), where the scene of the spring flood embodies the image of the rampaging River of Life, and also in the utopian story "Toast" (1906), where the river carries all humanity into a spacious, shining sea of universal happiness.
In visual art, bodies of water are not just a recurring motif but, so to speak, have their own genre — marinism (marine painting). How can one not recall I. K. Aivazovsky or William Turner? Prominent representatives of "sea" painting include Aleksey Bogolyubov, Lev Lagorio, Nikolay Gritsenko, Leonid Blinov, and Alexander Beggrov. Water is an important subject in the works of Katsushika Hokusai, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Claude Lorrain, Rembrandt, Claude Monet, and Van Gogh. In I. E. Repin's paintings, rivers are tied to human history, whether in "Barge Haulers on the Volga" or "What a Space!" Contemporary artists also actively depict aquatic spaces, for example, the works of Artem Chebokh (digital marinism).
