Palina Turko
Palina Turko (b. 1995, Stowbtsy, Belarus) is a Belarusian photographer currently living and working between Poland and Belarus. In her practice, she works with documentary photography, mockumentary, and analogue processes, exploring themes of memory, identity, and personal and collective experience. Her projects develop at the intersection of reality and fiction, where photography becomes a tool for creating alternative spaces and reflecting on the world around us.
Palina graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Photography (2025) and previously studied at Blenda Photo School. In 2024, she became one of the three winners of the PhotoArtDoc Mentorship Program with her project Anniversary. The project was presented at the PhotoArtDoc exhibition in Vilnius, the exhibition Breaking the Silence at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Minsk, and as part of Museum Night at Duży Pokój Gallery in Warsaw. Anniversary. Проект был представлен на выставке PhotoArtDoc в Вильнюсе, выставке «Нарушая тишину» в Национальном центре современного искусства в Минске и в рамках Ночи музеев в галерее Duży Pokój в Варшаве.
In 2025, Palina participated in the Do Art Together Mentorship Programme (FSH1 & Picturedoc Foundation), where she developed the project Cacner, as well as the All About Curating programme in Berlin. Together with the organisation Wielozmysły, she conducted an author-led tour for people with visual impairments, exploring possibilities for inclusive engagement with photography. Cacner, а также в программе All About Curating в Берлине.
// the author's Instagram
Stolbtsy: An Anomalous Tourist Guide
This project began with my return to my hometown, Stolbtsy.
Several years ago, I left. Later, circumstances brought me back, and that return became the starting point of this project. Being in the town again, I realized that I was seeing it differently. It felt as though I had returned to a place that had long remained in the past, a place that carried a quiet sense of bitterness.
I found myself observing people I had known all my life. Time had changed them physically, yet it seemed that something essential within them had remained untouched. Many had never left the town—or even the country. This feeling of almost motionless time filled me with an overwhelming sense of melancholy, as though the town existed according to its own laws, preserving everything as it had always been.
Gradually, I no longer wanted simply to document this feeling — I wanted to find a language for it. This led me to imagine Stolbtsy as a town governed by its own anomalous logic: a place that never truly lets people go, that calls them back, preserving its spaces, memories, and time itself.
From this idea emerged the fictional Institute of Spatial Stability. Presented as a tourist guide, the Institute investigates difficult-to-explain urban phenomena, classifies anomalies, issues recommendations for visitors, and treats everyday life as the subject of scientific research. By adopting the language of official documents, the project transforms familiar urban spaces into possible evidence of a world where the boundary between reality and fiction can no longer be clearly defined.
The photographs in the project were made during my exploration of Stolbtsy. I am interested in the moment when an ordinary urban environment begins to reveal itself as a place governed by its own internal rules. Working with photography, handmade paper objects, and elements of mockumentary, I construct a world that exists between documentary, memory, and fiction.
Welcome to Stolbtsy.
If you are holding this guidebook, it means that you have already arrived in the town or are only planning to do so.
In either case, we recommend remaining calm and paying no attention to possible inconsistencies in your own memories.
We wish you a pleasant stay.
Or a pleasant return.
Palina Turko
