Siarhei Yazlavetski

Portobello Road Market has long been a site where objects, cultures, and histories circulate. Antiques once associated with British domestic life appear alongside food stalls, street performances, and the everyday rhythms of a contemporary multicultural city. What appears as a lively market scene is also a space where identities, memories, and values are continuously exchanged.

This project explores Portobello Market as a living archive of circulation. Rather than documenting the market as a fixed place, the work observes how objects, gestures, and people move through it: antiques change hands, food is prepared and consumed, conversations unfold between strangers, and fragments of cultural heritage appear in unexpected juxtapositions. These movements reveal the market as a dynamic ecosystem where economic exchange intersects with cultural performance.

Drawing on ideas from visual culture and urban anthropology, the project approaches the market as a microcosm of contemporary urban life. The images focus not only on the objects being traded but on the infrastructures of exchange: reflections in shop windows, temporary stalls, packaging materials, gestures of negotiation, and moments of pause between transactions. Through these details, the photographs examine how value is produced, transformed, and circulated in public space.

Shot on 35mm film, the work embraces the material qualities of analogue photography to echo the tactile presence of the market itself. The grain, colour, and physicality of film reinforce the project’s interest in objects and surfaces, while also slowing the act of observation.

Ultimately, the project seeks to reveal Portobello Market not simply as a destination for tourists or collectors, but as a layered environment where histories and identities continuously intersect. By focusing on small gestures and overlooked moments, the work asks how everyday acts of exchange shape the cultural memory of a city.

"Golden Wedding: A Celebration of Fifty Years" is a photographic series commemorating the golden wedding anniversary of my beloved aunt and uncle.

These images capture a singular moment in time, the day they marked half a century of companionship and commitment. Through my lens, I aimed to encapsulate the essence of their enduring bond, expressed in tender moments, shared laughter, and quiet reflection.

This collection serves as a tribute to their remarkable journey and an inspiration for all who witness it. As we celebrate their fifty years together, "Golden Love" reminds us of the enduring power of love and the beauty of lifelong partnerships.

Echoes of the Elements is a black-and-white photography series captured on film, exploring the primal beauty of Iceland—a land where nature’s core elements of water, wind, fire, and earth converge in a breathtaking dance of raw power and quiet poetry. Through my lens, I pay homage to the unique landscapes that make Iceland my muse: rocky coastlines wrapped in mist, windswept shores under vast skies, and waterfalls carving paths through ancient stone. Each photograph reflects my admiration for Iceland’s wild, enduring spirit, where grandeur and intimacy intertwine in every scene.

Guided by words that evoke the island’s soul—spume, moss, glacier, troll, wind, sulphur, and silence—this series is both a tribute and a love letter to the elements and textures that shape Iceland’s landscape and my own inner world. Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s declaration, “I am a lover of silence and the sound of the wind,” these images seek to capture more than just scenery; they are an invitation to pause and listen, to feel the solitude and strength of this land as it stands steadfast against time and tide.

Iceland, for me, is a place where the profound and the poetic coexist. Its shores and highlands invite a contemplative stillness, a silent reverence for the beauty of the natural world. In this work, I aim to capture not only what I see but what I feel—moments of timeless connection between earth and sky, stone and sea, echoing in shades of light and shadow. This is my ode to Iceland, an island that holds the quiet power of silence, the roar of waterfalls, and the whispers of the wind.

An introspective photographic journey, Venusian Dreams reimagines Iceland’s landscapes as an ethereal sanctuary. Captured on Purpura film, Iceland’s familiar terrains transform into surreal visions of purple and blue, bridging Earth with the mythical realm of Venus and inviting viewers into a world of beauty, mystery, and silent introspection.

Inspired by the ancient Isle of Cythera—Venus’s sacred sanctuary—this project serves as a personal pilgrimage into feminine identity and solitude. Iceland becomes a mythic retreat, a place where solitude is revered and nature’s silence offers a sanctuary for reflection and self-discovery. Here, landscapes are infused with the artist’s romantic vision, capturing the timeless allure of Venus as both a celestial and mythological muse.

Through these surreal colours and untouched spaces, viewers are invited to explore an imaginary world that blurs the lines between reality and myth, nature and inner sanctuary—a realm for those seeking a place to retreat, reflect, and embrace the delicate dance of strength and vulnerability, guided by the spirit of the goddess Venus.

Silhouette of a Dying City is a visual meditation on the quiet erosion of one of the world’s most iconic cities—a place not only succumbing to the waters that define it but also fading under the weight of its own myth. Through a series of ethereal, monochromatic images, I strip Venice of its familiar vibrancy, its bustling crowds, and its defining details, leaving only faint outlines and silhouettes. What remains is an invitation for viewers to reconstruct the city within themselves, to imagine a Venice of their own making, piecing together fragments of a dream.

This is a Venice suspended between presence and absence, where buildings, canals, and gondolas emerge as fleeting whispers on the edge of memory. Like silhouettes of people we think we recognise, these ghostly forms invite us to fill them with our own memories, associations, and fantasies. Here, Venice is not the vibrant tourist destination it has become, but an ancient, haunting space—a spectral stage where one can sense the murmur of voices, the touch of history, and the inevitability of time’s relentless passage.

In these images, Venice is a city at risk of both physical submersion and cultural erasure. It exists as a “ghost city,” neither fully alive nor entirely lost. My aim was to capture Venice not as it is seen, but as it is felt—a place where the line between reality and reverie is as fluid as the surrounding waters. By reducing Venice to its purest form, I hope to offer a glimpse of a city in decline, asking viewers to consider what it means to love, remember, and ultimately let go of something that has always felt eternal.

This series is my tribute to a city slipping away—a dreamscape that lets us confront both its fragility and our own. Through these silhouettes, I invite you to mourn, to remember, and perhaps to glimpse Venice in its ghostly, transcendent beauty.

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All images from this album was captured by iPhone 4S and filtered by Instagram.