Photographer Oksana Zhila is an Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the series ‘Displaced’. To see Oksana’s body of work, click on any photograph.

I had always wanted to live in another country. I was drawn to new cultures, new people, and unfamiliar environments. Yet when I finally migrated, I realized that it was not only physical relocation from one place to another. It was also a complex psychological transformation — an internal rupture in which familiar structures of belonging, memory, self-perception, and identity began to dissolve.

Through photography, I attempt to convey a sense of nightmare, fear, and disorientation — the feeling of breaking away from a past that no longer belongs to me while facing a future that has not yet taken shape.

This series became a way for me to reflect on displacement not only as loss, but also as a complex process of becoming — a slow reassembling of the self and the possibility of becoming someone new.

Artist Statement:

I work in the field of conceptual and fine art photography, creating psychologically charged images that explore themes of self-perception, personal experience, and emotional transformation. In my practice, I frequently employ multiple exposures, glass, mirrors, and reflective surfaces as tools for the visual exploration of inner experience. Through distortion, repetition, and subtle surreal elements, I seek to construct visual metaphors that reflect not external reality, but internal psychological states and landscapes.

My work combines portrait photography with experimental techniques such as image fragmentation and layered compositions. This approach allows photography to move beyond documentation and enter a space of symbolic, subjective, and introspective experience. Natural landscapes, domestic environments, and minimalist interiors often serve as settings for my visual narratives, where the familiar acquires a sense of strangeness and the human body appears mutable, vulnerable, and fragmented.

Bio:

Oksana Zhila was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. She graduated from a medical university and worked as a physician for many years. After emigrating to Finland several years ago, she turned to photography; studying photographic art became both a form of personal transformation and a way of understanding her new reality. She studied at Elena Sukhoveeva and Viktor Khmel’s School of Photography (2024–2025) and at Natalia Zhukova and Anna Grazhdankina’s online photography school (2023–2026). Oksana’s work has been presented at international festivals and exhibitions. Her photographs have been published in online publications and featured in group exhibitions. She is currently developing several long-term projects. She lives and works in Finland.

All images and text © Oksana Zhila