Autumn

Golden autumn in central Russia: ochre fields, birch groves, a dirt road, mist over the far river. The sky is overcast but opening into warm shafts of light — the hour when light arrives from the side rather than from above.

The church on the hill is white stone, single-domed, of the Vladimir-Suzdal kind. That is a type, not an address: there are no real places in this series, and this hill is not on any map.

At the left edge, on a granite boulder, sits the walker — the same one who passes through every subject of The Russian Landscape. The road leads from the foreground to the church, and the man is looking the same way.