.ru is based on Control Refresh, a documentary photography project about young people in post-Soviet countries. While it was being made, the war in Ukraine started, forcing me to return to the Netherlands and freeze the project. I wanted to expand the series, but it was very risky to continue and I realised that it would be impossible to return to these countries in the near future.

New technologies became a way to continue the project from a distance. With the help of Midjourney, a visual artificial intelligence programme, I extended the images. Using the Al, I began to mix my own photographs together, indicating which details I wanted to take from each image. .ru became a series of surreal landscapes with real main characters, surroundings and details that were never present in the same place at the same time.