Anastasiia is a declaration of love from a Kyivan student to her foreign lover and her native land, Ukraine. Through parallel streams of documentary photographs, Skype screenshots and texts, a dialogue between Anastasiia and her lover, the photographer Christian van der Kooy, is reconstructed. The photo book covers a period of two years in which Ukraine faced major changes. Anastasiia’s report is above all an exploration of her everyday life and a reflection on intimacy in times of the Russian annexation and information warfare.

By conveying Anastasiia’s memories, Van der Kooy sheds his very own light on the creative way the Ukrainian people deal with recent events in Kyiv, Odessa, and Crimea. The book describes, among other things, the ‘removal of communism’, such as the bringing down of Lenin’s statue in December 2013 and the manual scrubbing of the Maidan Square after the Revolution, but also National Women’s Day, Crimea just before the annexation, and the relationship between religion and superstition. In the current Ukrainian geopolitical discourse, there is an urgent need to define a cultural identity that embraces the mind-set of the generation born after the independency in 1991. Van der Kooy aims to contribute to this, with his fresh look at Ukraine.

The book was published by The Eriskay Connection in 2018 as a softcover with linen cap and folded insert, 210 x 270 mm, 168 pages, in English and Ukrainian. Texts are by Anastasiia and Christian van der Kooy; translation by Björn Remmerswaal (English) and Maryna Slonenko (Ukrainian); editing by Iris Sikking, Christian van der Kooy and Rob van Hoesel; design by Rob van Hoesel. The first edition is 750 copies. The title is also given as Anastasiia: she folds her memories like a parachute.