Toma Gerzha

Biography

Website: www.toma.art

Toma Gerzha (Moscow, 2003) is an Amsterdam-based documentary photographer and multimedia artist. She explores stories related to the mentality of Eastern Europe, the insider-outsider perspective and party culture as the ultimate remedy. Last year, her works were shown at the Biennale de l'Image Possible, Encontros da Imagem, and at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Her photo projects have been published in De Volkskrant, Marie Claire Belgique, Marie Claire Italia, ELLE Korea and British Journal of Photography.

The project

"Control Refresh is the result of my research into the impact of political events on young people within a number of post-Soviet countries. Over the past three years I visited teenagers in remote cities in Russia and Eastern Europe. I made an extensive collection of photos of youngsters who shared their vulnerability with me, who joined me in their boredom and who told me about their dreams. The lives of these young people are strongly influenced by traditions, social media and politics.

In 2021, I made my first major photography trip across Russia. I contacted teenagers in small towns through social media and spent days (and sometimes weeks) with them. I documented their lives and surroundings with my camera. Took notes and wrote down their stories. My project was interrupted by the Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2022. I decided to include the change within my research and continued to visit my protagonists regularly.

By the end of 2023, I had built up a collection of stories of youngsters in Eastern Europe, recording how their lives and choices are affected by political decisions in their countries. Without realising it, I created a time document of my own. In it, I record how a free country closes itself off from the world within a short time and how its inhabitants try to adapt to the changes.

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While Control Refresh was being made, the war in Ukraine started, forcing me to freeze it. I wanted to expand the series, but it was hard for me morally to overcome myself and return to Russia in 2022. New technologies became a way to get over myself and prepare myself for this trip. I used my documentary photographs from 2021 to create a database on the basis of which Artificial Intelligence programme worked. Using this machine, I began to mix my own photographs together, indicating which details I wanted to take from each image.

AI helped me not to stagnate and continue my journalistic work, in 2022 I returned to Russia and continued to capture my (real) main characters. By also submitting this series of artificial images (page 2) I want to challenge the team of Paris Photo, to show that images created by artificial intelligence can be of value if the use of AI is talked about in an open manner."