When I think of home, I think of my frozen nose, glued together. The feeling that arises when the frost at minus 20 degrees is so cold that it freezes your nostrils when you breathe. When I think of home, I smell the smoke from the wood stoves that everyone in Stepanovka uses for heating, as the endless Russian gas has not yet found its way to our village. In Stepanovka, you cannot see the stars; the smoke from the chimneys mutes all colors and sounds.

I told my German friends a lot about this place, of which beyond stereotypes and cold, hardly anyone knew anything. Since the beginning of the war, I doubt whether I truly understood what defined my homeland. My homeland has turned into a collection of dusty memories, and I can no longer say if they ever corresponded to reality.

In the week after the war began, I wrote a letter to my parents but never sent it. The longer the war lasts, the deeper the scars become, and the further apart our parallel universes drift. What remains of a home when one's own country becomes a perpetrator? Who do you become yourself when your own family suddenly feels like strangers? Ten months after the war started, I returned for the first time to see my parents and to capture the feeling that accompanies me: the pain, the loss of identity and home, and love for people who believe in a different reality. This project was photographed for the Stern Magazine.