Photographer Marina Tokareva is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Heterotopia.Staying between’. To see Marina’s body of work, click on any image.

Michel Foucault called spaces that change our everyday perception of life and time heterotopias. These are places that combine different functions and meanings at the same time, trying to stop time in themselves or, on the contrary, to accentuate its impermanence.

Examples are libraries and train stations, hospitals and theaters, hospices and maternity homes, refugee camps and roadside hotels.

They all make us feel the passage of time in different ways. Sometimes we tend to avoid these places because of a sense of discomfort.

This state of “being in between” works as a time trap, keeping us on the cusp of reality – between the old and the new one. Sometimes between life and death.

I started the project by collecting such places and people who live or work there. I wanted to convey their emotions and experiences – how they live this sense of time. But then I got myself into the space of heterotopia for a long time.

Working on this subject was a painful experience for me. My grandmother got very sick. I went to Chisinau to help take care of her in the hospital.

None of my relatives, including my grandmother, were against me taking photos. Everyone got used to me going everywhere with a camera a long time ago.

I thought photography would help me get through those moments of pain and uncertainty. I clung to the images as the last thread that brought me back to reality.