In The Liminal Hours

The old version of the self no longer functions, while the new one has not yet formed and still has no clear outline. Constant connection to the outside world through availability, visibility, and legibility once felt like life itself, until it gradually turned into overload.

The hotel becomes an intermediate zone — a space without memory or history. Today the room is yours, tomorrow it belongs to someone else. In this place there is no past and no future, and such an architecture of anonymity allows one to dissolve while remaining at the same time. Here it is possible not to be someone, and yet not disappear completely. But the ideal zero-space does not prove to be safe. Cameras, windows, corridors — everything that suggests the possibility of being seen — creates the lingering sensation that the old world is still watching, even though you now formally exist outside of it.

The observer, however, is not external. It is your former version, the one shaped by expectations and constant visibility. This version continues to exist as an internal witness and does not allow you to step through the next door so quickly. The conflict is not between a person and the world, but between the former self and the one that has yet to emerge.

It is a space of temporary suspension, where identity loses its stability and becomes fluid. Not a destination and not the beginning of a journey, but an extended stay in the in-between, where the only observer is yourself. A state between “no longer” and “not yet”, between absence and presence, between the desire to disappear and the impossibility of fully leaving oneself behind.

In The Liminal Hours

The old version of the self no longer functions, while the new one has not yet formed and still has no clear outline. Constant connection to the outside world through availability, visibility, and legibility once felt like life itself, until it gradually turned into overload.

The hotel becomes an intermediate zone — a space without memory or history. Today the room is yours, tomorrow it belongs to someone else. In this place there is no past and no future, and such an architecture of anonymity allows one to dissolve while remaining at the same time. Here it is possible not to be someone, and yet not disappear completely. But the ideal zero-space does not prove to be safe. Cameras, windows, corridors — everything that suggests the possibility of being seen — creates the lingering sensation that the old world is still watching, even though you now formally exist outside of it.

The observer, however, is not external. It is your former version, the one shaped by expectations and constant visibility. This version continues to exist as an internal witness and does not allow you to step through the next door so quickly. The conflict is not between a person and the world, but between the former self and the one that has yet to emerge.

It is a space of temporary suspension, where identity loses its stability and becomes fluid. Not a destination and not the beginning of a journey, but an extended stay in the in-between, where the only observer is yourself. A state between “no longer” and “not yet”, between absence and presence, between the desire to disappear and the impossibility of fully leaving oneself behind.

PHOTOGRAPHY & ART DIRECTION ANASTASIA MAISKAYA
STYLING ILIA ARKHANGELSKII, ALEX KLOP
MODEL SASHA MARCHENKO
HAIR & MAKE-UP ALEKSEY MAKSIMOV
STYLING ASSISTANT RITA ULIAMAEVA
SPECIAL THANKS WHO OWNED IT, POISON DROP

WEARING SAINT LAURENT, PRADA, HUGO KREIT, ARMANI, BOTTEGA VENETA, MARC JACOBS, MIU MIU, VALENTINO, ROCHAS, ROBERTO CAVALLI, COIS, GAPANOVICH, LIZA KAZBEKOVA, HERALD PERCY, VALENTIN MANGUSHEV FOR IANIS CHAMALIDY, ALEXIS BITTAR, BABYBABYBABY, ROEN, CAVIAR JEWELLERY, A.F. VANDEVORST, ILIA ARKHANGELSKII, MINERAL WEATHER