Anastasia (she/her) — Nothing but light

I’m Anastasia, a creator of Nothing but Light. This was my first full Nothing but Light photo session conducted by LeeAnn, my friend and a participant of this project. She’s done an amazing job putting me through the process I put other people through. She even rejected my initial statement saying I could write a better one, just like I rejected her first draft as she submitted it to me to publish.

I was photographed in the same space where I photographed 40 people over the month of February.

When I saw the photos I thought to myself: “I look good!” I asked LeeAnn, if she sees me again looking this good, to be a friend and to tell me (she agreed).

For the past 10 weeks I’ve been living on a farm having one of the wildest experiences of my life, and I’ve been amazed by my body every day: how well it has managed heat, how it can sleep through the crows of five roosters, how it can be stung by a bunch of wasps and go on like it’s not a big deal. I’ve been appreciating my immune system, digestive system, lower back, skin, knees and arms for working. My body is so strong! It heals so fast! It is so good at being alive!

When I saw these photos, my body, the body I thought I’ve been abusing for the past 10 weeks surprised me. It looked… happy (wait, is this what you wanted all this time?). My arms, my thighs really didn’t mind all the biking and lifting. My hair that I’ve been washing with soap in a river has never looked better.

I looked at the photos more and thought that I need to up my sunscreen game, but I really didn’t mind the redness of my cheeks.

I was so excited about these photos. I chose to bike back to the farm (two hours) not to give my body a workout, but the experience of being alive. I’ll swim in a river some more while being reassured again and again, that my body is strong, resilient, and that it wants to move around and to have experiences, just like my mind does. It is not there to carry my head from place to place, it’s not just a machine meant to accomplish tasks, it is there to be alive, to be scratched and bruised, to climb, to swim, to jump.

My body is a source of my joy, my connection with the world. As a person who was socialized as a girl, raised to be a woman, it was hard to take this body back, to claim it fully. It took me a long time, but I did it. It’s mine!

For the whole month of August the stars were falling, every night. I’d go pee outside and there she was: a shooting star across the sky. She was there flying and I saw her. This is how I see this work and this project now. We are all here so fragile, so mortal, ever transforming, so damn gorgeous and as we intersect we witness each other as we are in this moment: between everything that has happened and everything that is about to happen, right now, so alive, so beautiful.

COVID, unaddressed climate change resulting in intense fires in California where I now live, tensions at the level of brooding civil war, all heightened my senses and gave me a feeling of urgency to live with every cell of my body, to do my work.

Life owes me nothing. My body owes me nothing. It is a gift that is mine so briefly that all I can do is to gaze at it in awe while it flies like a shooting star.

My name is Anastasia Kuba.

I am a photographer of this project. People who participate in the project can photograph me too on my/their camera or phone. These are selected photos that were taken by my subjects.

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As a person who’s lived through a childhood trauma, I’ve struggled to define my boundaries and to understand my value. I was getting a lot of attention because I was conventionally attractive and naturally, I assigned my value to my body. In my early twenties I worked as a dancer in a topless clubs. Surprisingly, through this job I developed better boundaries. “No. You can’t. This is not allowed.” - I had to repeat those words over and over again until they became natural.

As I grew able to advocate for myself in most situations, defining my boundaries with people closest to me still remained a challenge. As I learned to act certain, my internal sense of value was still caught in a web.

In 2008 I quit dancing and became a professional portrait photographer. I photographed 100s of people of all genders, background and ages who are learning to recognize the beauty of their bodies unapologetically. To my subjects this photo sessions are a radical act of self acceptance.

I’ve been helping people to feel comfortable in their body for the past 9 years and I understand how important it is, but I also know that beauty and integrity are not connected. I love my body, but I am still struggling to unlink my sense of worth from people’s perceptions. I have already learned that no amount of approval of any kind can help one to love oneself.

That self love lies elsewhere, in a deep understanding that respect is a human right, not something one needs to “deserve”, because person’s life and integrity are sacred.