Your name
Pratya Jankong and Olga Fedorova
Place of birth
Thailand/Ukraine
Place where you live now
Queens, NY
3 words to describe you
Pratya: Lame couch potato
Olga: High-strung idealistic pessimist
Why do you take pictures?
Pratya: I like to record the quiet and mundane moments that make up life.
Olga: If I were smart enough to be a doctor and help people that way, that's what I would do. But I am not, so I make photographs that bear witness and help me and other people process what happened. Sometimes my photos simply visualize pain that would otherwise be invisible.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Pratya: Everyday life, observation of people and places.
Olga: Sometimes from research, other times from people I encounter or something I see in my daily life.
Who are your influences?
Pratya: Wolfgang Tillmans, Deana Lawson, Richard Mosse
Olga: Jim Goldberg, Carol Guzy, Antoine D'Agata
What determines the subject matter you choose?
Pratya: For my personal projects, I usually start from myself and anything that I'm close to or that is familiar to me. After that, I'd think, research and dive into the subject. Sometimes, I need to feel it about the subject matter. If I get some feeling from that subject then I'd consider to do more research.
Olga: I am strictly a documentary photographer so the subject matter has to exist at the intersection of my interests and what is accessible to me. There are countless subjects I would like to work on but very few I can actually access. Also, I always ask myself - why does this need to be a picture? Would this topic work better as a book, a film, or a podcast?
What impact would you like your art to have?
Pratya & Olga: To inspire moral imagination.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Pratya & Olga: Francis Bacon and Pink Floyd
Is there anything you want to add?
We're good!

Bed Checks
Project statement

Bed Checks is a project that began as a reaction to the government’s perverse attention to my own mixed immigration status marriage. The project combines portraiture and intimate snapshots with my Green Card application and documents from my “alien file”, obtained through a freedom of information request.

Despite being widely seen as the easiest way to immigrate to the United States, mixed status marriages are subject to an invasive vetting process. A "bed check" is an immigration enforcement tactic wherein government agents knock on the married couple's door at dawn, seeking proof that the citizen and "the alien" sleep in the same bed. As my partner and I gathered the evidence of our marriage's validity, it became clear that the notion of family preferred and recognized by American law still enshrines the mythological nuclear family as its ideal model. Anyone who falls outside of the traditional structure risks being turned away.

Immigrants are thus pressured to self-police their marriages, crafting the types of marriages most likely to pass the vetting process. As time in immigration limbo went by, we began to doubt whether our relationship looked convincing enough. Failure to meet the standard of evidence can lead to deportation, and what counts as evidence - a capitalist trail of shared debt and consumption - is irrevocably tied to power dynamics of race, gender, and class.

pratya jankong olga fedorova
@pj_project @olyafe_