Among the trees: uncovering a sad, dark story of rural Russia

The Republic of Udmurtia in central Russia has one of the highest male suicide rates in the country. Travelling to the region for the first time in 2010, Moscow photographer Sofia Tatarinova met Lubov Sufiyarova, a widow whose husband had hanged himself several years before. During the same trip, Tatarinova visited various villages in Udmurtia where she met numerous women whose husbands had met the same fate and who had clubbed together to overcome their grief through art. Over the next two years, she travelled back to the region to explore the high incidence of male suicide. She discovered that because of the men’s shamanist beliefs, which strongly connect them to nature, they often chose to take their lives in the forest. “I was interested in concentrating on the portraits of widows, their stories and the places where the suicides took place,” says Tatarinova. “Through these images the viewer can imagine how nature can exert an influence on the people who live here.”