Toska is a cyanotype diptych portraying the untranslatable Russian word, Toska. Toska (тоска) is roughly translated as an amalgamated feeling of sadness, melancholy, and lugubriousness. Vladimir Nabokov says it best while providing commentary in Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, commenting;

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, or love-sickness. At the lowest level, it grades into ennui, boredom.”

As the man in the photograph clings to the bouquet of tulips, he displays a sense of anguish in his state of being, although he has something real to grasp in front of him, toska continues to linger over a moment of joy. He turns his face away from the viewer, and in turn, the world, in an effort to understand this longing feeling that remains.