Information

‘Delicious & Healthy Memories’ photobook: Self-published photobook dummy, edition 15 items, 21×27 cm, hardcover, laser print, 128 pages, 103 photographs, thread-stitching binding, 2026 year.

Each copy incorporates selected pages from the authentic Soviet publication The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food (pub. 1963), including illustrations, recipes, cooking tips, making every book copy unique.

Archival photographs from Anatoly Suzdaltsev collection, taken in 1960s-2000s across the USSR. All archival photographs are authentic.

Statement

This project explores the distortions of memory through photographs of domestic celebrations in the USSR. The book is based on photographs selected from a photographic archive dating from the 1960s to the 2000s. As an example of Soviet propaganda, the book includes pages from original edition of ‘The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food’ (pub. 1963), which promoted an image of abundance dramatically detached from real life in the Soviet Union. As a counterpoint to this fiction, some real Soviet dishes were reconstructed using photogrammetry.

Memory is also affected by the reconstructive nature of human memory. Scientists have identified the phenomenon of memory reconsolidation, in which the brain rewrites memories of an event or a person each time they are recalled. Emotions and thoughts can influence this process; as a result, memories may have little in common with reality.

Starting around 2020, distortions and noise come not only from our unreliable memory, but also from AI. All archival photographs in the book are authentic, but some of them were extended (outpainted) using AI, blurring the boundary between document and fiction.

As a result, memory can no longer be considered reliable, as it is significantly distorted by memory reconsolidation, contaminated by propaganda, and filled with false artifacts created by artificial intelligence.