Gomma Photography Grant 2025
Run and Seek
Photographer
Polina Soyref
Run and Seek
14 Feb, 2026
The Netherlands is one of the few countries in Europe that considers asylum cases from Russian political activists and LGBTQ+ individuals. According to unofficial data, there are currently about a thousand Russian citizens in refugee camps (asylum seeker centers) awaiting a decision on their documents. The refugee camp in Dronten, 75 km from Amsterdam, was originally designed over 20 years ago as a “family camp”. It now hosts people from a wide range of backgrounds. Residents live in compact housing blocks and “huts” – seven or eight rooms with communal kitchen and bathroom. Despite Dronten camp being considered relatively comfortable and safe, residents share stories about suicides, murders, and assaults, about racism and inequality. In these in-between spaces, people take care of their loved ones and have fun. Those who stay in a camp for more than a year try to imagine futures beyond paperwork and waiting lists.
About the photographer
Polina Soyref
Polina Soyref (b. 1993) is a visual artist and photographer from Yekaterinburg, Russia, currently based in St. Petersburg. Soyref primarily works with portrait and documentary photography, often utilizing analog processes, including film and silver gelatin printing. Her artistic focus is rooted in the human body as a record of personal memory and a vessel of resistance and political presence. She is particularly drawn to closed or self-regulating communities – such as protest camps, detention centers, illegal settlements, and underground kink collectives – where personal autonomy and systemic control intersect. She also works as a social journalist. Her works have been longlisted three times for Redkollegia, Russia’s leading independent media award. Alongside her art and journalistic work, she volunteers in the fields of social support and human rights, contributing to grassroots initiatives that assist vulnerable and marginalized groups. Her long-term personal projects explore themes of vulnerability, embodiment, and identity using Polaroid snapshots. Soyref’s work has been exhibited in group shows in Rome, Berlin, Glasgow, Sarajevo, Athens, and Budapest. She is the winner of the Allard Prize Photography Award (2020) and a finalist in the Sarajevo Photo Festival (2024), NDA Awards (2023, 2024), and TIFA (2024).
