“Someone set fire to us. Everyone else died. I wasn’t there.”

Photographer Andrej Krementschouk is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of these images. From the book/project ‘COME BURY ME’. To see Andrej’s body of work, click on any photograph.

These are images of happy days in a Russian suburban house occupied by orphans and excerpts from the book ‘COME BURY ME’.

This house, located in Vladimir City, burned and all occupants are presumed dead.

A restaurant (most expensive in the city) and hotel was erected on its place. See images of this burned house and the construction of a new restaurant building here.

“The house was no longer there. Only the remnants of a fire.”

“A few months later I returned to the scene of the fire. I picked my way across the burnt debris to the living room, the place where we had had so much fun. Here and there in the gloom of the charred room I could see used needles. It was summer, and it was hot.”

“ ‘What happened to the house? Where is everyone?’ I asked.

She turned away and said, very matter-of-factly, ‘Someone set fire to us. Everyone else died. I wasn’t there.’ ”

“And I still don’t know how much of their stories was true – not everything, I’m sure of that. Maybe they were just that: stories – born out of a desire for another life, a life which they so wanted to be real.”

“God willing.

Only one thing I know for sure about my friends. In every act, in everything they did, it was as if they were saying, ‘Look! Don’t you understand? Without me, this big, wide world would be missing something!’ ”