Denys Nahaitsev (Денис Нагайцев ): The Harvest Between Worlds
Symbolism, season and the construction of the modern witch through photography
Photography by Денис Нагайцев (Denys Nahaitsev)
Instagram:@nagg.den
How the sickle, green gown, black flowers and blood-red details transform the witch into an embodiment of September
September is an unusual month to photograph a witch. October gives us darkness easily. September exists at the threshold. Fields are being harvested while much of the landscape remains green. Flowers are fading, leaves are beginning to turn, and around the autumn equinox, daylight begins its retreat toward winter. In this series, Денис Нагайцев (Denys Nahaitsev) builds his subject around that transition. She is not simply dressed as a witch. Her clothing, colors and objects make her feel almost like a personification of September itself: life still present, harvest underway and decay beginning to enter the landscape.
The Sickle: The Harvest
The sickle is the key to the series. Before its curved blade became associated with death and the supernatural, it was an agricultural tool used for harvesting crops. In Nahaitsev’s photographs, it is returned to the field, where that original meaning becomes visible again. September has historically been a period of gathering and preserving what the growing season produced. The sickle therefore represents an ending, but one with purpose. Something is cut because it has completed its season. Nahaitsev also uses its shape beautifully. In the closer portraits, the curved blade begins to resemble a crescent moon, echoing the crescent painted on the woman’s forehead. The agricultural cycle of the field and the celestial cycle of the moon become part of the same visual language.
The Green Gown: What Is Still Alive
The deep green dress prevents the photographs from becoming entirely about death. September is not a dead landscape. It is a changing one. Green remains while the vegetation surrounding the woman dries into brown and gold. Her clothing therefore carries the visual memory of summer into autumn. She stands between what is still growing and what has already reached the end of its season. There is an interesting historical echo here as well. Brilliant green became notoriously fashionable during the nineteenth century, when some textiles and artificial flowers were colored using arsenic-containing pigments. Beauty and danger could quite literally occupy the same garment. Nahaitsev’s gown is not a recreation of arsenic fashion, but that history gives the green-clad figure an intriguing additional resonance.
White and Red: The Mark of Transformation
Beneath the green is white, which Nahaitsev gradually disrupts with red. White gives the stains somewhere to become visible. The garment appears as something that has passed through an event and emerged changed. The red continues onto the woman's hands and throat, making it impossible to separate what has happened to her clothing from what has happened to her. Blood is the obvious association, but red is also the color of vitality. It already exists naturally in her hair and lips before appearing as something more unsettling. That contradiction mirrors harvest itself. Harvest means abundance and nourishment, but it also requires cutting. Something must be removed from the earth so that what grew can sustain life elsewhere.
The Black Floral Crown: Beauty After Bloom
Flowers normally belong to the visual language of spring and summer. Nahaitsev crowns his subject with them after stripping away their expected color. Black flowers allow beauty and decline to exist simultaneously. They also carry echoes of historical mourning dress, particularly the elaborate visual language surrounding black clothing in the nineteenth century. Yet the crown does not make the woman appear defeated by death. It gives her authority over the imagery surrounding it. For September, the symbolism feels especially appropriate. The landscape is increasingly filled with what remains after bloom: seed heads, dried grasses, harvested stalks and fallen leaves. The crown becomes another expression of that transformation.
The Crescent: Nothing Truly Ends
The crescent painted on the woman's forehead ultimately changes how the rest of the imagery can be read. A crescent represents a phase rather than a conclusion. The moon diminishes and returns. Vegetation retreats and grows again. Harvest concludes one growing season while providing food and seed for what comes afterward. Placed alongside the sickle, the crescent turns the photographs away from simple death imagery and toward cyclical time. That is where the witch becomes especially connected to September. She stands in a landscape undergoing the same process she appears to embody.She wears the green of what remains alive, the black of what has finished blooming, the red of life and consequence, and the white of something that has been permanently changed. She carries the blade that marks the harvest and wears the crescent that reminds us another cycle will follow it. This is why Nahaitsev’s photographs feel less like Halloween and more like September. October gives us the witch after darkness has arrived. Nahaitsev photographs her while the world is still changing.
Photography by Денис Нагайцев (Denys Nahaitsev)
Instagram: @nagg.den
