Oksana Yushko is one of the winners of this year’s Conscientious Portfolio Competition. About her work, juror Susanna Brown wrote: “Oksana Yushko’s project Kenozero Dreams reveals both the beauty and banality of life for the inhabitants of Kenozero in Nothern Russia. We glimpse a place that has remained relatively unchanged for decades and an atmosphere of longing, of waiting. The landscape and portrait images are equally evocative, but for me the most memorable photograph in this series depicts two teenagers in a field, collecting flowers in the twilight haze. Dressed in modern clothes they carry out an ancient pagan rite. The boy’s gaze is transfixed, balancing a delicate wreath of flowers on his baseball cap he stares into the gloaming, and perhaps into his own future.” In this conversation, I talk with Oksana about her work.