This cyanotype series grapples with the process of leaving Russia on ethical grounds

Ida Anderson lived in Moscow for 20 years before she realised she couldn’t stay anymore. After Russia’s war against Ukraine began, she made the move to Montenegro after always dreaming of living by the sea: “I found something deeply healing about the Adriatic coast after everything that happened,” says Ida. That same healing blue is the colour that dominates her new photography and print project Blue Valentines, a love letter to identity, migration and fractal communication through cyanotypes. “Photography, because of its widespread availability, reproducibility, and omnipresence, carries a powerful communicative potential,” says Ida. “In that sense, it acts almost like the perfect migrant – a medium that can be sent anywhere across the globe, continually transforming along the way.”

After starting Blue Valentines, Ida began sending postcards to friends who had also left Russia. As these postcards travelled through various postal systems, their surfaces gradually accumulated stamps and tangible traces of the journeys. This achieved Ida’s aim of creating emotional photography that reveals subjective mental spaces, rather than neutrality. Ida’s evocative and sensitive print project mirrors the emotional makeup of those postcards. “I’m fascinated by exploring contemporary sensuality in general, especially its shady awkward sides,” says Ida.

The striking negative space made in the process of cyanotypes is used wonderfully here and Ida’s photographic eye captures water streams that become ripples in the print itself – as well as lovers kissing in a shady blue, rainbows rendered colourless, snowy landscapes, construction and bird wings. ”The cyanotype process is simple yet demands a hands-on, human touch, which makes the photograph deeply personal,” says Ida. “I’m drawn to that trace of corporeality left on the image. And of course, cyanotype is one of the accurate ways to convey the emotional state of loss and melancholy.”