My understanding of photography is mainly based on Roland Barthes ideas about the magic nature of photography and its uncomprehensibility. Thatīs why I have the slightest trust in computer-manipulated (both digitalized and digital) photography and prefer to deal with traditional photographic technologies which seem to be more authentic and significant means of artistic expression. I normally work with b&w photography and use different toning processes combining them in untypical, spontaneous way which cannot program the result. This way both produces unique, unrepeatable pictures and destroys our notions about reproductivity of photography. However, in my very new works I use colour photography as well. My early works from late 80-ies were connected with Cartier- Bressonīs method of the "decisive moment" in photography. On my opinion, the impetuously changing reality of perestroika time demands exactly the such direct way in interaction between a photographer and surroundings. As a result, the majority of photographic series from that time was created in this way. Among them I could note Fragments of Being (1987-88) (different scenes from urban life of Minsk and Vilnius), Here, There and Everywhere (1990-91) (the Soviet time symbols and signs of the Soviet power manifestation inside urban landscapes which one could see everywhere in the former USSR), The Garden of Stone (1991) (a collection of collapsing samples of mass propaganda which carried out its ideas by means of installing thousands of cheap gypsous copies of primitive sculptures all over the country), The Market Place (1990) (scenes from the market place life reanimated in perestroika time) and others. An evident interest towards the outdoor reality of late 80-ies was replaced by a certain disillusionment both with the new reality and applicability of the direct photography method in 90-ies. Registering functions of photography and its seeming objectivity have become things of minor importance for me. I began to work out my own ways of photographic vision to more subjective and more emotional ones. The picture toning process was converted from mechanical procedure into the real artistic action with unpredictable results. So-called "spontaneous toning" is used in Persona non grata project, which can be considered a complex, collective portrait of my contemporaries who are not compatible with the System; the System in which they were born and in which they are forced to continue their lives. Every picture from this series has its own title which sounds as a generalization: "The former Engineer", "The Lonely Girl from a Hostel", "The Independent Person", "The Young Graduate" etc. This project has a very personal character what means that chance, strange people which are not well- acquainted with me, cannot be used as models. Persona non grata series includes different nude, semi-nude and so-called "ordinary" portraits of people in which the degree of their nudity can be probably used as an indicator of a modelīs frankness during such a photographic confession. As a rule, the majority of pictures were taken inside the real interiors without any stage effects. Sometimes models suggested me their own decisions what produced a kind of surrealistic effect (for example, "The Future Patron of Arts" is a man in a gasmask with Sovietskaya Kultura newspaper in his hands). The Swedish critic of photography and a director of Fotografiska Museet in Stockholm Mr. Jan-Erik Lundström has called these pictures as "kitchen surrealism". Persona non grata series was started in late 80-ies and now it includes around two dozens of portraits. But the project is not finished yet what means new personages to be constantly appearing in it. The other idea which is still actual for me is connected with the quest for new expressive means in the very structure of photographic image. During last years I have been working with the blurred images which are produced by taking pictures out of focus. All the pictures from the Lucida momenta exhibition project were consciously made in this way. The blurred close-up pictures are combined into a few big grids (composites) and sequences due to give them additional narrative possibilities. Some pieces of this project have their own titles. For example, the composite of 12 b&w pictures (toned in sepia, every picture has 24x36cm size, total dimensions ~120x140cm) are provided with the citation from Arthur Rimbaudīs poem in French: "La musique savante manque a notre desir" ("Our desires are short of the queer melody"). A phrase from old Slavonic chronicles which points to the paganish roots of some Christian rituals in Belarus "...Upon the Holy Ghost Descent or after the Rusalii..." (Rusalii is the old Slavonic word for the Midsummer Night festival) is used for the vertical sequence of 6 b&w pictures (total dimensions ~180x40cm). The Latin expression "lucida momenta" has given the title to the sequence of 8 b&w pictures (total dimensions ~60x160cm). The solar symbol in its different variants can be easily identified as the general sign of the whole exhibition project which, as a result, was titled as Lucida momenta and which reminds us of light origins in photography. One of the latest projects named Untitled (1996) was specially made for the exhibition The Field of GRAVity. Artists Agains AIDS. It should demonstrate our uncertainty under contacts with the reality. By means of specially prepared lenses of my mirror camera I took real pictures of virtual human bodily forms -- pictures of a body, which is probably ill. The human naked eye does not recognize this invisible illness, but the optically armed eye can discover another reality; the hidden reality. Every picture in this series is numbered in accordance with its negative; the single and non-manipulated negative, which can serve as a certificate of another reality existence... Such a methodical rejection of "standard" methods in photography can be decoded as an attempt to struggle against the dictates of cameraīs lenses which force their standardized vision upon the human eye. Thatīs why the using of lensless or another primitive cameras and different photogram practices in combination with complicated toning processes could be my next step on the way towards the further emancipation from the dictatorship of the contemporary optical machinery.