This photo story is inspired by Hoffmann’s concept of the dual world — the fragile space between reality and dream. Snegurochka, our guide, appears in two incarnations — in white and in black, like life and its reflection. She embodies an unresolved mystery: the beginning of a new cycle and at the same time a delicate creature woven from crystalline cold and the primordial memory of snow.

Drawing on a romantic–grotesque image, we explore the motif of invisible, otherworldly forces intruding into the fabric of the earthly realm. We seek to capture the elusive birthplace of reality — where metaphysics brushes against the stride of the present. The opening frames are filled with a trembling foreboding, like the stillness before a storm. In the finale, the heroine seems to dissolve into a crack between dimensions, leaving us with the icy whisper of an untold secret.

The visual shadows of Mikhail Shemyakin’s art pass through this story like ghostly echoes: the dark figure inspired by the black snowflakes of his Nutcracker, and the makeup referring to the Metaphysical Bust, as if taking on its fragile enigmatic quality.

On one of Shemyakin’s drawings there is an inscription: “We are reflections in the pool of Time. A dream is the reflection of life. Life is the reflection of a dream.”

So it is with our heroine — she freezes for a moment between worlds, dissolving into her own reflection. And we never truly know where her disappearance becomes reality — in a dream or in waking life…