Category: Santa Cruz Photographer

Anna Voznyuk

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My name is and Anna Voznyuk also pronounced as Anya Voznyuk depending on if you’re my friend or someone professional.

My dreams?

As of recently, a lot of them are unsettling. Worries mostly about pertaining my family out of the country and Ukraine. I’ve been having nightmares, uncomfortable memories, and flashes. But as for my life, I want to become a researcher and study molecular biology and cells and what people specifically ensure. But I will get there.

It’s funny because I have them very fresh in that wake up, but then over the day they kind of disappear. But let me think. I think there was one pertaining to the dam that was being broken. There was just recently a breakage in her son where the dam fell apart and caused flooding. I had worrisome thoughts about my family getting flooded and everything, but there are realistically, there are where you’re very up the river.

Some of our family members are currently fighting, are our friends. A lot of the areas where they’ve been are liberated. So they’re all right now, but they’re doing well. We support them financially very well. So though they’ll be okay, I’m sure, as long as the state continues to resist and the troops, the Russian troops won’t be able to find a new tactic to shoot more inland because they’re very underneath the Kiev.

I am working the labs research lab, and we’re studying gamma bacteria. And I’ve been doing a lot of experiments regarding hybridization reactions, gene fish and catfish. I’ve been trying to identify specific gamma bacteria using gene fish and doing overlap fluorescence using cartouche. And that’s been a bit of a struggle because the probe is not very specific and a lot of the fluorescence is indecipherable if it’s from other organisms, natural pigment or my probe not attaching properly.

But as of recently I was not able to contribute too much to the lab due to finals. But hopefully over the summer I’ll get to work on it.

I think the best part is when you have a goal and you’re kind of realizing it.

When something works and you find some data that’s never done before to guide you to some new discovery,

So it’s  cool to be part of something that’s going to become bigger.

I think from childhood, like I am, I really like science in elementary school and I really enjoyed it further on in to my high school career. However, it was not until like the middle of high school when I realized that I will be going to college. It’s because I didn’t really have high belief in myself, and I honestly was planning to continue a career in gymnastics.

And but after that started going down and my grades started going up, I realized, okay, maybe I should stick to academics and actually applied due to my urgency of my parents and yeah, my own realization that I will not be able to remain in the sport. And I do really like science. So. Yeah.

I was initially going to go to Stony Brook. It’s a very expensive place, but due to scholarships, I was able to kind of bring down the price really well. And I was already going there. I had had the place there. I paid my fees. But then the very last minute, I was taken off the waitlist and UC Santa Cruz and I knew the place because I’d been there before.

And I really loved environment. And my mom was like, Hey, the prices are the same. You don’t have it here. But because it’s less expensive than stony Brook, they’re about the same and you’re closer to home and you like the ocean and please the leaf. And I’m like, okay, I’ll change my plans and go back. Yeah.

I really enjoy it. I just whenever going down the boardwalk or the Westcliff drive, I just really like seeing people out there to enjoy their day, to see the ocean, to watch the surfers. And I really like to. Everyone is kind of see, I don’t want to see mining drone business because it’s not really like that. It’s more we are here together enjoying the moment.

So that’s what I do like about Santa Cruz. As of other stuff. I mean, I do wish that people could help the homeless more and find better solutions for them to get aid. It pains me a lot to see people on the streets and especially at night when I would walk in, I, I wish I could help them, but I don’t have the means to like if I’m, for example, eating something and I someone asked me for food, I will do that.

Everyone’s different, everyone’s unique. And that’s what I love about people. How wonderful they are.

I don’t think there was ever, like, a group that I could associate myself with and call them my people,

I guess my opinions don’t really match people’s necessarily.

I have different views and takes and don’t often agree and I feel suppressed because I’m not able to express them. And because of that, I fear the fear of expressing makes me want to avoid people in case I do something wrong and be labeled in a certain way. So I stick to myself in that sense. Another thing is I don’t really match a lot of the culture people do like I have.

I grew up speaking a different language. For example, Russian, Ukrainian, and I was mostly training in gymnastics and as a result, I’m behind on anime, I’m behind on the American culture. I don’t have a TV connected to cable like we didn’t never had that home. So all the shows, I don’t only am now recently watching them on Netflix being like, Oh, so that’s what they were saying.

It’s I don’t know, but everyone’s very lovely and nice most of the time. So what can we say? I do find recently is, is the science community where I do the research like the lab workouts, but we’re all adults, we all work and once in a while meet up for beer, which is awesome. Yeah.

Mm. I don’t trust you. Yeah. I mean, I would maybe could say off record, but not on camera.

Robert Fallon

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Hi, I’m Felix.

My dreams? Yes. I generally don’t remember them.

Oh, yeah. You know, the usual thing flying and then getting tangled up in. In the electrical lines and stuff like that. And, you know, not being able to maintain altitude. And then there are things I don’t know, they’re zombies or what on the ground trying to grab, you know, standard dreams that all kids have.

Originally, there was some places I seemed to go to with some regularity. The last dream I had, it was about a country of was Russia. And there was the number 3 million something involved.

I don’t know. That’s all I remember of it. A lot of people keep dream journals and I think that’s a wonderful thing.

Well, I hope to take a shit every morning. You know what?

When you get up in years, I’m going to be 83. So that’s an important thing. You know, old people get together. Did you have a bowel movement? How was your sleep? You know? Oh, my back, you know, it’s the usual kind of thing.

There’s so much. I’ve built all these projects which are material things and places, and then the what happens in them, and that includes the gallery, which was one of my favorite things that I’ve been a part of me and a group of my friends were working on the, the bins for Streetlight Records and earthquake proofing, and we welded up all the metal fixtures.

And when we’re done, this building was here and it was just like paint storage. It had horribly low ceilings, didn’t have any windows, and we had all these really talented guys. I think Streetlight Records had more welders on tap than any other record store in the whole universe, you know, And people would kind of come in and say, What are you guys doing over open the records, Sir, I’m a welder, I’m a metal sculptor, and they came to realize what an incredibly talented I think there are more artists per capita.

And in Santa Cruz than almost any other place. And I met so many really great people and I saw said, Well, let’s make it our art gallery. And we met. The city was really helpful to us when we were putting Streetlight together. And there are you know, there are homeless people living here in the what’s our courtyard now?

And there was no wall between the alley. And so the whole alley was home full of homeless people. And so they were instead of making it difficult to get permits, they really wanted us. We paid to put the wall there that between the gallery and and and the alley. And the city was building a gate there. And we met the architect of the gate, the designer and the city engineer, and he helps us engineer the the roof here.

So the people were really nice to work with the building inspectors and, you know, the whole thing. It really was really cool. We we did a window after we opened. We put sand in the window, a streetlight, and we had a little toy, a roller coaster and merry go round. And we had some aliens and stuff like that and maybe some vampires or small, you know, not not full sized, not life sized ones.

And of course, you have to feed them at night and stuff like that. So we just had a little toy vampires and we said Santa Carla welcomes Street Records, you know, Santa Carla?

Yes, Yes. It’s one of my all time favorite movies, right?

Well, that gets wrapped up in, my general feeling about living in the middle of the decline and fall of Pax Americana.

it’s really wonderful. It’s one of the most wonderful I’ve traveled around and this is one of the most wonderful little communities in the world geographically. It’s wonderful. You go to Miami or something like it’s just mile after mile of sand and high rises here.

Each beach has like an individual or is geographically separated from the other ones. And it’s one of the neat things the coastline is so varied. You get things like the the wharf and the wharf and Capitola and the wharf that used to go out to the concrete ship and all that. So I’m very positive about this place.

I’m, you know, I, I really have a hard time understanding why anybody has to live in the streets and on the sidewalk in the most in one of the wealthiest societies that has ever existed. You know, I’m shooting 83. I’m going to have a big retrospective show of my work in the gallery on August 4th. You’re invited to my birthday.

Sophie Warren: People of Santa Cruz

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Hi, I’m Sophia Warren.

I have the craziest dreams, I have like multiple dreams per night.

They’re always complex narratives with, like, other world logic and, like, multi-dimensional different versions of me.

It’s frickin wild trip.

It was a dream within a dream where I dreamed that I had a recurring dream every night where I went to a planet that was an alien, otherworldly, bizarre black market carnival.

And I would sit at this table and listen to all these aliens do drug deals every night for a week.

But that was the dream within the dream.

I have multiple different timelines and different dimensions.

Dreams that come in sequence.

But I don’t I don’t exactly know when.

I don’t really have reoccurring dreams, though.

Mostly they’re like pseudo, like a pseudo version of my house

or a pseudo version of Santa Cruz or

sometimes a completely different place I’ve never been.

I want to be the best filmmaker in the entire world ever.

I want to go to Burning Man.

So, I’m making these to give to people at Burning Man. Other than that, just film

filmmaking.

I’m working on a big screenplay–like my, like, huge feature that I want to make one day–and then a smaller one, a short film called The Doll.

That’s a horror film that I want to make.

The best part is when my ideas finally come and click into place

and I just–I can’t wait to get to the point where my screenplay is finished.

That that moment of just finishing that screenplay and having it done, I’m really excited for that moment.

Letting the ideas come.

I mean, it’s the same thing. I love it.

I used to be really jaded about it because I grew up here, but now I love it.

People of Santa Cruz: Maria Chavez

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My name is Maria Chavez.

Dreams.

Once in a while, I do.

Like home invasion. Like having somebody come in your house. And I just remember I was scared.

I dream that me and my mom and my brother, we were at some construction stuff, and my brother was working across the way–he’s paralyzed, he’s quadriplegic–and he was doing drugs behind my mom’s back and I was like telling him stuff.

I’ve dreamed before that I was going down–it was like Santa Cruz Boulevard–there’s this kind of bump in it. It seemed I was in a convertible, and then we went over the bump and, like, just really jumped way up and way down.

Well, I mean, I used to have, like, big, ridiculous dreams,

I’ve never been to Montana, but like, someplace that’s green and I think like Scotland or Ireland would be beautiful. I would love to live in a castle and I would love to have Friesian horses. And I would love to take one part and make it big for all the as much abused animals as I could put, like dogs and cats, whatever, and just let them run, just throw food out there and let them be okay, you know,

I used to live on the street for a little like over ten years. And I would like to do stuff to help the people out there, like go and serve lunches sometimes or, you know, coffee, hot chocolate when it’s cold.

I was in that spot before and just do some things that could really help them.

If I had a bunch of money to actually make a documentary and I think it would be cool to make one.

I got house like two years ago with help, you know?

And so I have an apartment now right down the street from the park and but it was not easy. And people like my friends that I knew out there, I see them all the time. And they asked me, you know, how did you do it? Like, what did you do?

I feel like they want to think I have a secret knock and I’m hiding something.

It’s not. It’s just really hard and it’s different, you know?

When people ask me that, I try to say what I did, how I did it, you know, But I thought it would be kind of cool to make a documentary is like to go and just find somebody that’s homeless that seems very serious about getting, you know, housing of how to go about it in Santa Cruz and just go, okay, well, let’s see, what do you do?

First, let’s go to the shelter. You know, like ABC, go in the direction that they tell you to go. They tell you do this, you know, do everything they say and see. Does it really pan out if you if you really follow their directions and stuff? You know what I mean?

To see the steps and like how it turns out.

I started last December of 2022, working at the Homeless Garden Project showing you how to do skills like, you know, farming.

In the winter months, we make wreaths like Christmas trees, and we also do lotions and candles and that kind of thing.

We recently switched to like the farm part, which is that way on the west side of Santa Cruz.

We do all kinds of planting of different vegetables, all kinds of different things.

And we learn how to do that. And I’m new at it because, you know, the winter was kind of long this year.

They give you a social worker that’s just your social worker and they go through your personal things–it’s molded to the person. It’s not like this is straight across things. So you get to say the things that you want to personally work on.

It’s really nice to be able to see people make progress. And for the program to really work.

I like Santa Cruz. I do.

I mean, I loved Santa Cruz for just for logistics. I mean, we’ve got the ocean, got the mountains.

We are so spoiled with all the stuff here and me, I’m guilty also. And we still complain. It’s too hot, it’s too Cold River. But, you know, I don’t know if everybody else is, but I’m guilty of that sometimes. But we have it made in that department.

But I think sometimes, you know, the money goes the wrong way. It just depends who’s in charge of it. I think there’s people that are really doing stuff, really doing the right things to help the people and to help the to help this problem go in the right direction. You know, and I also I’ve come across people that seem like they make these rules that don’t make any sense.

I used to be, you know, associated with a lady at Encompass and she helped me through so many different things.

The two people that helped me the most, they didn’t have to help me because my caseworker, I don’t know, she quit or she got fired. She was gone one day and then they never gave me another one. And both those ladies I knew and they both offered to help me when they both had full caseloads. And I wasn’t on there. I wasn’t in the sections that they were responsible for. One of them was out of Watsonville, and she offered and that’s who helped me the most, you know.