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| "Portrait of Lenin on the Facade of the Winter Palace for May Day Celebrations, Leningrad, Russia, 1973" by Henri Cartier-Bresson |
"After nineteen years since the first trip, I longed to go back and revisit Russia. There is nothing more revealing than comparing a country with itself by grasping its differences and trying to discover the thread of its continuity." Henri Cartier-Bresson (About Russia: Photographs, 1973)
In 1954, Henri Cartier-Bresson boarded a train headed for Moscow. His photography had taken him around the world, but he would become the first foreign photographer allowed into the closed society of the post-war Soviet Union. He took enough photographs of the ordinary lives of Russians to fill up an entire book, About Russia: Photographs.
The image shows a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the USSR, towering over the facade of the Winter Palace for the May Day celebrations (May 9, 1973) that commemorate the defeat of the Nazis and the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War (June 22, 1941 - May 9, 1945). It has become known as Victory Day and has been celebrated as a national holiday in Russia since its formation in 1991. The large poster of Lenin looming over the two Russian pedestrians suggests the "larger than life" affect Lenin had over the Soviet Union and its people.
Since Lenin's portrait is on the Winter Palace (former home of the tsars) it is likely an allusion to the 1917 Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace which ultimately placed Lenin and the Soviets in power. The words behind his head are partly hidden, but likely say something along the lines of "The Great Unbreakable Unity..." until it is cut off by the end of the photograph. This kind of image would undoubtedly stir up the strong emotions of Russian nationalism current at the time of the photograph.
(News values: emotion, prominence)
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"Portraits of Communist Party leaders lay abandoned in Pripryat inside the Chernobyl Zone" from Chernobyl--The Invisible War (2006) by James Hill |
On April 26, 1986, nuclear reactor no. 4 in the Chernobyl power plant exploded in Pripryat, Ukraine (then-SSR). The city of Pripryat was built specifically to house some of the most highly skilled and intelligent people in the Soviet Union who worked for the plant. It was built in the latest modern architecture and was supposed to symbolize the forward-thinking of the Soviet Union. For several months after the explosion it was attempted to stop the radiation and waste leakage, but the damage had spread throughout Europe. Despite the damaged reactor, nuclear energy was produced in Chernobyl until December 2000 using reactors no. 1, 2, and 3. The radiation levels have dropped low enough that short visits to the site are safe. There was supposed to be a project completed in October 2015 for rebuilding the structure of no. 4 so it would not collapse and leak more harmful fumes into the environment, but the current Ukraine unrest has pushed the project aside until 2017. (For more information, see website.)
British photographer James Hill has been photographing Russia for over 20 years. Through his photography, Hill wants to capture the emotion of the event as he had first witnessed it. He approaches the images of Chernobyl in color, demonstrating the full disarray of the once-glorious, modern city that was home to some of the Soviet Union's most educated minds. The image presents one testament of the tragedy, a city overtaken by decay and crumbling from years of neglect.
Taken after the fall of the Soviet empire, it is interesting to note the displaced portraits of the communist leaders among the wreckage. Perhaps Hill is posing a larger question: what have we learned? Part of the reason the incident was so destructive laid in the silence of the Soviet leaders. Because they had waited too long to ask the world for help, it was too late to contain the harmful effects of radiation when they finally did.
(News values: emotion, prominence)
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| "A Memorial for the victims of School No. 1" from School No. 1 (2014) by Diana Markosian |
"I am constantly searching for a moment of silence between myself and whatever it is I am photographing. It's an emotional process, which transcends anything else I've experienced. It is ultimately an expression of myself: all my feelings revealed in a moment, in an image." Diana Markosian (interview with American Society of Media Photographers, 2014)
From winning numerous photography awards and being published in a variety of news outlets, Diana Markosian is an emerging photographer in documenting post-Soviet life through images, as well as healing loss and trauma with the use of photography. One of her collections she has named School No. 1 was created to commemorate the Chechen terrorist attack that killed more than 300 people in the Beslan school. Marksonian explores the relationship between memory and place, and how a terrible tragedy has defined this small town.
Children and their parents crowded into the small School No. 1 on September 1, 2004. It was the first day of the Russian school year known as Knowledge Day, and would host a variety of activities for students and parents to begin the new year. However, this school year would begin with the worst school massacre in the world. Two groups of Chechen separatists held a three day siege at this Beslan school, killing 334 hostages with 186 of them being children.
Marksonian's photo is part of the memorial to the victims of the siege that hangs on the walls of the abandoned school. (The school was never reopened and a new one was built opposite of it.) "I don't think that it will ever really do justice to what happened to them," Marksonian says as she explains to GUP magazine her School No. 1 project, "but I do think that photography can help bridge that gap that arises when you lost something important." Taken 10 years after the tragedy, her image pays homage to the victims while reminding the rest of the world the lives that were lost.
(News value: emotion, prominence)
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| "In the Underworld" from Drunken Bride (2008) by Donald Weber |
Donald Weber, a two-time winner of the World Press Photo, is a Canadian photographer who became interested in photographing Russia and Ukraine during the Orange Revolution (Nov. 2004 - Jan. 2005). He wanted to understand the people of the era and of their place. In his interview with Eugene Safonov, Weber claims that he is less interested in photographs than he is with the characters he is representing. In this image, Weber uses his photograph to bring awareness to the growing problem in 21st century Russia.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, organized crime exploded into all areas of Russian life: street crime, government corruption, organized crime, etcetera. The crime can be linked to the failure of socialism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union into republics. The absence of a central government left freedom to the civilians but also to the criminals. Boris Yeltsin referred to Russia as "the biggest mafia state in the world, the superpower of crime" in 1994. By the time President Vladimir Putin came into power in 1999, the oligarchs and the world of organized crime was seriously threatening the Russian State. The problem with crime continues to be a topic in 2015 as the new government forms a justice system capable of dealing with the arrested criminals.
Although it has become somewhat cliché with images and headlines of gang warfare, assassins, Chechen terrorists, Weber captures in this photograph the subtle crime that lurks in Russia today: drug and alcohol abuse. The men in Weber's photo can be seen smoking cigarettes and presumably making a concoction of "krokodil," or a codeine mixture that competes with heroin on the streets. According to the Council of Europe information on Russia, Russia has become one of the world's largest heroin consumers with an estimated 90% of the 2.5 million Russian drug addicts using heroin.
Despite the pervasive drug problem, alcohol--typically vodka which has high levels of ethanol--remains the top killer. It does not come as a surprise that the average life expectancy of a Russian male is 64, with 25% dying before the age of 55; but it does speak volumes of the culture and political stability after the collapse of the Soviet Union (where there was an abrupt decline from 65 years in 1987 to 57 years in 1994).
(News value: impact, emotion, conflict)
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| "Kiss in: From Russia with Love" on Sept. 8, 2013, by Kevin Van den Panhuyzen |
"We do not have a ban on non-traditional sexual relationships. We have a ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia. I want to underline this...We are not forbidding anything and nobody is being grabbed off the street, and there is no punishment for such kinds of relations. You can feel relaxed and calm [in Russia], but leave the children alone, please." President Vladimir Putin at Sochi Winter Olympics 2014
Kevin Van den Panhuyzen is a Belgium-based photographer who often captures political movements in European and surrounding countries. His images aim to bring awareness to the protests citizens have against their governments.
Gay rights in Russia has been a hot topic in the last few years. A recent demonstration that received international press was the protest at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi. While homosexuality does exist in Russia, the general public tends to be some of the most hostile. Social conservatism is in fact growing in Russia; a state-ran poll in 2005 showed 59% of Russians were against same-sex marriage and has grown to 80% in the last decade. It is interesting that while Russia re-emerges as a global leader, it also becomes more conservative towards gay rights.
This photo was taken in early September 2013 outside of the Russian Embassy as some 200 openly gay people gathered for a "kiss-in"--or a dedication to the victims of President Vladimir Putin's anti-gay policies. It shows three lesbian couples participating in the "kiss-in" action and sporting the gay pride colors with their attire.
(News value: emotion, conflict)
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