I’ll Be Late Tonight

Roxana Savin

2020 — Russia

About this series

“I’ll Be Late Tonight” is an autobiographical project that critically engages with themes of domesticity, gendered labour, identity, and power dynamics within patriarchal social structures. Rooted in my personal experience as a stay-at-home mother, the work reflects on the socio-cultural and psychological dimensions of unpaid domestic and care work, often rendered invisible and undervalued.
The project was developed during an eight-year period spent in a gated expatriate community in Russia, where I relocated after leaving a career in law. Within this enclave, traditional gender roles were deeply entrenched: men occupied the public sphere as economic providers, while women—many of whom had left professional lives in their home countries—assumed full-time caregiving responsibilities. This context intensified feelings of isolation, invisibility, and internal conflict as I navigated the loss of professional identity and autonomy.
This work interrogates the persistent cultural ideal of domestic bliss and conceptualises the home as a site of both constraint and resistance. The project critiques the ways in which mass media representations reinforce normative ideals of femininity, placing disproportionate emphasis on women’s appearance and their roles as wives and mothers. Such representations contribute to the internalisation of gendered expectations and the reproduction of unequal power relations. Positioning myself as both subject and author, this project became a process of self-reflection and resistance—an attempt to articulate and legitimise the complex, often unspoken experiences of women within domestic spheres.

Photographer: Roxana Savin
Nationality: Romanian
Based in: Geneva, Switzerland
Website: www.roxanasavin.com
Instagram: @roxana.n.savin

Roxana Savin is a visual artist, and award winning photobook author, working with photography and moving image. Savin graduated MA Photography with distinction by Falmouth University UK. Originally from Romania, her diverse body of work is influenced by personal experiences and her rich cultural heritage, exploring themes such as identity, belonging, gender roles, status of women in contemporary society. Her works have been widely exhibited in Switzerland, France, Romania, Slovakia, Russia, Netherlands, Estonia and published by British Journal of Photography, Der Grief, Royal Photographic Society Magazine, Photomonitor, ARTdoc magazine, among others. Her photobook ‘I’ll be late tonight’ was awarded Silver Winner by PX3 Paris and Honorable Mention by Encontros Da Imagem Book Award. Savin’s short film ‘Rhythms of Restraint’ was awarded Best experimental short by SFAAF Awards (Chile) 2024, Honorable Mention by WAEFF (New York) 2025 and was in the official selection at Berlin Women Cinema Festival 2025. Roxana Savin is based in Geneva and works between Switzerland and Romania.