Text and photos by Sergey Yeliseyev.

As a fact almost every artist-photographer time to time working with naked model and I am no exception.

I began to seriously pursue the photo in 2000, when, after the father’s death, I found his analog camera Zenith EM.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Dance” Self portrait with nurse”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Aniline 60x50cm. My own studio, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

I took pictures of everything in the beginning as done all photographers. I took pictures of the architecture of St. Petersburg, people on the street, birds and dogs on the street.

In a year it has bothered me and I started doing my own projects.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Red summer”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Acrylic 40x30cm March 2003 Studio in House of Artists. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. March 2003.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

I rented a small studio and began to take pictures of nude girls.

I found models in the street, in the subway, on an Vernissage in galleries or museums.

If somebody attracted my attention, I come to her and asked if she wanted to be a model. Some of them immediately asked me:- “Naked?”

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Girl in Red Boots before the Isaac Cathedral”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Acrylic 40x30cm. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. May 2005.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

The first time I took pictures of young girls, aged 15th to 20-25 years.

In 2002, I began photographing fashion and asked models after Fashion show, if they want to be photographed naked or in underwear as done it Helmut Newton.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Butterfly”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Acrylic 40x30cm Taxi station. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. August 2005.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

I used black and white film. I developed the films by myself and made gelatin silver prints by myself as well in my Darkroom (as I do it till now). I have colorized mat black and white prints partly with acrylic in my studio.

In 2003 I came to the conclusion that I should be engaged in my own projects, because I had good ideas and imagination (as I wrote the music and lyrics for the songs playing in the Rock-Band in the past). And I began to invite my former acquaintances models for the new projects.

Photo session was held in the museums, on the square, in abandoned taxi stations in open air, in village,and even in the studio of outstanding Soviet sculptor Michael Anikushin.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Symbol”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Acrylic 40x30cm. Country side, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. August 2005.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

All the previous works were created by me from 2003 till 2007.

Every artist is constantly looking for the new forms of creativity to realize his ideas. And when he feels that long time he does the same and nothing new, it comes a Depression and Stagnation.

He dropped his hands, and he did not do anything for a long time.

And time has come to think about the work done.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Musicians” Self portrait with 20-y.o. prostitute by name Nastja”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Acrylic 30x30cm. My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. March 2012.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

He thinks “where to go” and in what way.

What new forms to apply.

What techniques to use.

Sometimes in a dream come new ideas as a result of hard and constant brain’s activity.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Chains - Self portrait with nurse”. Gelatin silver print 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

Sometimes it happens by accident (as it may seem at first sight).

But there is nothing accidental in creativity does not happen.

Master’s Brain constantly fueled from outside – during a walking around the city, meeting with friends and colleagues, visiting restaurant, party, travel to different countries, information from the Internet.

As a result, there comes a moment when the artist finds a new direction in creativity for himself and he begins to create new work with inspiration and high energy.

And finally I invited a young prostitute to my studio in spring 2013.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Gas mask test” Self portrait in gas mask with nurse”. Gelatin silver print 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

My series “Self portrait with prostitutes” has begun in particular from this photo session.

One composition replaced by another, and suddenly I do not know why, I asked her if I could stand beside her and make a joint portrait. She gave me positive answer.

Practically all models who agreed to be photographed naked were not against shooting with me in a pair.

Usually, before the photo session, I’m writing a script – what composition should I create, what objects have I to use during the session, whether to use underwear, whether to use a mirrors or something else.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Kosi and Zabivai” Self portrait with 50 y.o. prostitute”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Aniline 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

Often the scenario is changing during a photo session and some compositions are born directly in the process of shooting.

For example a model saw a flag in my studio and started to play with it.

Or the model had a good mood and started to dance in the pause between the compositions.

Next time a model was tired and started to walk in my studio. Suddenly she stopped at a table with a chessboard and became rearrange figures in meditation.

This is almost the same as improvisation in jazz. And it’s very familiar and close to me, as I was a rock musician in the past.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Chess - Self portrait with nurse”. Gelatin silver print 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

My studio is like a museum. Time has stopped in my studio. Everything in it reminds the Soviet Union time. There are many things in it such as metallic bed, brick oven for cooking and heating in rooms, old semi-ruined toilet, rusty sink, antique three-leaved mirror, a large number of mirrors of different shapes and sizes, vintage floor lamp, a samovar, cast iron, old ventilator, gas masks, wooden abacus etc. I also have a collection of women’s clothes and underwear of the Soviet period, shawls and scarves, corsets and glasses, shoes, masks and different accessories for women. And I also use it in my work.

I am also in good physical shape, as I training in swimming and karate all my life.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Me Lying on the floor under the standing model”” Self portrait with nurse”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Aniline 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

And it also helps me during photo session when I create self-portrait with a prostitute.

The age of the models was different – from 20 to 50 y.o.

I am planning to expand the age range of the models up and down in the future.

Since the summer of 2013 I began to colorizing my black-and-white prints format 60x50cm with aniline dye, as did our forefathers 100 years ago.

Thus I inspire renewed interest to the tradition of the classic photography.

© Sergey Yeliseyev
“Castle” Self portrait with 50 y.o. prostitute”. Gelatin silver print colorized with Aniline 60x50cm My own studio. Saint-Petersburg. Russia. July 2013.
Please visit Self-Portrait with prostitutes, by Sergey Yeliseyev for the full size image.

Text and photos by Max Sher.

Map and Territory

I was born in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, and, at the age of 11, moved with my father to Kemerovo, a Soviet-built industrial city in West Siberia. Almost every summer, I used to travel back to St. Pete to stay with my grandparents, and I remember roaming the area where they lived with a Soviet map of the city – wittingly incorrect and lacking many streets including the one where my grandparents’ house was located. It should be said that normal, detailed city maps were hard to get during Soviet era. Back in Kemerovo, there was no city map available at all until late 1990s. I started putting the missing streets on my map of St Petersburg. Then I began exploring other neighbourhoods and putting the missing streets on the map as well. I was constructing, unconsciously of course, my own mental map of the city, thus symbolically defying the State image (‘map’) of the territory.

Dubna, March 31, 2010, 56°44′37.33″N, 37°10′16.43″E
© Max Sher
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Moscow, February 6, 2013, 55°44′33.92″N, 37°48′56.4″E
© Max Sher
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Travel and photography change your mental image of the place. It’s a cliché to say Russia is huge and it is – in purely mechanical terms of the area it covers. But if we travel and photograph where people live and where there is culture or industry, this image of hugeness shrinks dramatically. During Soviet era, the geographical map of the ‘sixth part of the world’ was one of the sacred tools of power. At the former czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, a huge map of the Soviet Union made of gems had been installed where the imperial throne once stood. When I was kid it was still there.

Moscow, February 16, 2013, 55°48′4.33″N, 37°36′56.23″E
© Max Sher
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The role and image of traveler and photographer in Russia also changed dramatically over the last one hundred years. The pre-1917 Russian photographers were private entrepreneurs who had a relative freedom of what to look at and photograph. Many of them produced picture postcards as part of their business, and these postcards depicted not only ‘attractive’ places but also prisons, factories, alms-houses or hospitals for the poor. This interest towards the everyday culture was effectively banned after the 1917 revolution. Photography was harnessed as a tool of propaganda and very soon, a certain matrix of representation took shape while attempts to picture the everyday routine began to be seen as subversive and treacherous. The image of the country was effectively reduced to that map at the Winter Palace. Traveling around the country became severely restricted as well. Many cities like Vladivostok or Kronstadt were sealed off even to Russians. The Benjaminian figure of the flâneur – inseparable from the image of the contemporary photographer – became virtually impossible. Moving around the country was only available to those employed by the State – military, officials, journalists, or scientists. Freelancing was illegal. Taking pictures in the street was equal to spying. All this, it seems, was one of the reasons for an almost complete absence of photographic work focusing on inhabited landscapes as a subject matter between 1917 and late 1980s. Very few images survive of how our cities looked and felt like, and changed during that time.

Smolensk, May 17, 2013, 54°47′58.15″N, 32°2′56.32″E
© Max Sher
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St. Petersburg, July 23, 2012, 59°51′48.93″N, 30°29′52.21″E
© Max Sher
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Today’s photographic practice still faces a lot of restrictions although incommensurable with the Soviet times. It is still technically prohibited to photograph railway bridges, for example, or to travel to the so-called ‘border zones’ without getting permission from the KGB successor agency FSB. The latter is all the more absurd that you can easily avoid it: once there, you get detained by border police, pay a 10-dollar fine and are allowed to stay on. That means still control for the sake of control.

Vereya, January 6, 2013, 55°20′37.9″N, 36°11′6.81″E
© Max Sher
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To photograph my landscapes I am often looking for elevated vantage points. By taking photographs therefrom I symbolically appropriate, privatise the viewpoint, the image and thus the territory that were tightly controlled as recently as a couple of decades ago. At the same time, these vantage points provide the necessary distance, both physical and metaphorical.

Zhavoronki, September 8, 2012, 55°38′31.2″N, 37°5′58.67″E
© Max Sher
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Russia as America

The main question of course is how to depict the Russian inhabited landscape today. I use this word – inhabited – because the term ‘landscape’ in our culture mostly refers to the pictures of natural scenery and not to places where people live. Interestingly, a Russian city is often considered ‘nice’ for the nature that surrounds it, not for urban environment or architecture. Since most of our cities are generally considered ‘ugly’, this perceived ugliness as well as many other unpleasant realities of our everyday life alienate many Russians from their own cities. We just do not consider them ours.

Smolensk, May 17, 2013, 54°47′57.35″N, 32°2′12.49″E
© Max Sher
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Smolensk, May 17, 2013, 54°47′7.83″N, 32°1′11.52″E
© Max Sher
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What I’m trying to do in my project is to bring out all the influences – from the 19 century Russian landscape painting and photography to Soviet-era postcards to New Topographics and Google Street View – that help define today’s visual vocabulary through which to look at and make sense of our landscape. What matters to me is the idea of a certain type of optics – focusing on the unnoticed elements of our living environment. It is very effective as a tool to accept and face the reality, to demystify it in a way. We need to look at our country the way American photographers look at theirs. Explore, record, accept, love it.

Moscow, February 16, 2013, 55°48′1.16″N, 37°36′56.04″E
© Max Sher
Please visit Russian Palimpsest, by Max Sher for the full size image.

Strange as it is, Russia has always been at loss for a detached, calm representation of itself because of either censorship (control of the image) or over-politicising / over-romanticising on the part of both the state bureaucracy and the educated classes (as noted by Vyacheslav Glazychev¹). While the state propaganda fed us with feel-good images and that gorgeous ‘map’ of a mighty empire, the ‘democratic’ image was supposed to ‘tell the truth’ or struggle for an abstract ‘common good’. I want to liberate the documentary photographic vision from both biases to aestheticise the ‘ugly’ to make it enter our consciousness. It’s nothing new, even in Russia, if we remember what the pre-1917 Russian photographers looked at and photographed. The point is: this is how Russia looks like, let’s face it, and let’s treat it as ours.

Vereya, January 6, 2013, 55°20′37.9″N, 36°11′6.81″E
© Max Sher
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Voronezh, July 1, 2013, 51°39′52.23″N, 39°12′42.12″E
© Max Sher
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Russian Palimpsest

So, why Russian Palimpsest? The title of my project suggests an image of the landscape as a multi-layered medium, written, erased and re-written upon over time. Basically, every landscape – American, European or Russian – is a palimpsest. But to my mind, our post-Utopian territory is a palimpsest par exellence where very little ‘shows through’ after the previous layer has been erased and is being rewritten upon. Despite a thousand-year-old history, this country collapsed twice in less than 80 years, first abolishing all the institutions of the past and the past itself to form a sort of an isolated apocalyptic sect (as defined by Boris Groys²), then dissolving this sect, only to find itself between the Future where it has already been and the Past where it had already been too, completely disoriented. As a result, our landscape presents an unbelievable pileup of ill-thought-out cities, top-down development projects hastily implemented without much prior analysis, poor infrastructure, childish architecture, and that famous feeling of impermanence, precariousness, and unrootedness, so ‘rooted’ in our identity. What might be the role of photography here? Catalog it! Of course, you can never make a full catalog of anything, even less so of something constantly evolving but a catalog of landscapes is possible. What should be included in it? In Russia, as in America, the only possible catalog of landscapes, I believe, is the one compiled from random images with something more in them than mere archetypes. I’m looking for images that convey a spatial sensation of the country, when you can say: hey, that’s Russia of our time. This is what I mean by demystification.

Podrezkovo, February 17, 2013, 55°56′32.59″N, 37°19′32.85″E
© Max Sher
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Ulan Bator, April 28, 2013, 47°25' 4.54"N, 108°12' 35.42"E
© Max Sher
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All photographs are captioned with the name of the place, date and exact geographical coordinates suggesting an open-ended diary-cum-catalogue of our time and living space.

For more photos and stories, please visit Max Sher website.

Ulan Bator, April 28, 2013, 47°54' 43.48"N, 106°54' 52.63"E
© Max Sher
Please visit Russian Palimpsest, by Max Sher for the full size image.

1. Vyacheslav Glazychev, Gorod bez granits, Territoriya Budushchego Publishers, Moscow, 2011, pp. 161-162.
2. Boris Groys, Politika poetiki, Ad Marginem Press, Moscow, 2012, p. 321.

Text and photos by Yana Feldman.

I would like to present my photo project “Saint-Petersburg. Childhood of many faces”, that is dedicated to children of different nationalities in Saint-Petersburg from families where the national traditions, customs and family traditions are really saved.

Buck drums
© Yana Feldman
Please visit Saint-Petersburg, Childhood of many faces, by Yana Feldman for the full size image.

I started to think over this project, when I was studying on the 4-th term in Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts. Being a student (and still now) I appreciated the work of American photographer Steve McCurry. I had the idea to make something of this kind. With the kids as the main heroes of my project. However, that time I did not have clearly formulated concept of my future project.
Then one day I got spontaneously my first shot series that further on leaded to start my work.

Together with my husband, we strolled slowly in the center of Saint-Petersburg, when he saw a group of gypsies Luli, who mingled with the crowd near the market and asked for alms. I decided to make some shots. To tell you the truth – at first time I was slightly frightened to start photographing them. I understood of course that we were in the heart of Saint-Petersburg, not a Middle Eastern or Indian town, but I still have not stopped thinking that they can yell at me, prohibit to shoot, do something else like this. Luckily, nothing happened. Although I shot mainly behind the back of her father. A sort of human shield for me.

Offense
© Yana Feldman
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Photographs turned out to be very lively, not staged at all. I still had no idea how I should use that series for me, so I just put it aside that days.

Next heroes of my project, I found, when I was invited to reportage a holiday in the Jewish boarding school for boys. For me, it was a new experience, so I asked for permission to stay on one of the lessons to see how it looked like. I made ​​some good shots from there, one of which became lately the presentation of my project.

Give me a hint!
© Yana Feldman
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That is probably after the second shot I have formed the final vision of my future project. I realized that I wanted to do a project on children of different nationalities who live in Saint-Petersburg. I deliberately turned down the opportunity to make shots in hinterland and/or other cities/countries. Originally is was an idea just to take pictures of children of different nationalities; further on it turned into a definitive decision to devote that project for those children who observe family traditions, culture, and any features that are transmitted in their families from generation to generation, all together at the same time living in a multinational city. Representing the people of different nationalities in my project, I want to show those children who, despite the fact that they live in St. Petersburg, don’t forget their traditions, celebrate holidays, study in special schools, and follow in their culture. In my opinion, no one can honestly convey the emotions and mood but a child.

I just tried to distance myself from a national perspective and to focus on some cultural and family values. But as it turned out – to do so would not be easy. After all, many family and cultural characteristics of families in some way connected with the national peculiarities of these same families.

The second home
© Yana Feldman
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Other heroes of his project, I began to search for different ways: through a variety of acquaintances, friends of friends, random encounters. With the help of social networks in which I methodically sought out by community groups and relevant words combinations. Finding such groups, I contacted the organizers, explained to them who I was and what I wanted from them, asked to give me the contact of families with children of a certain age, and whose families follow the traditions. Many people denied participating in my project because they did not understand who I was and what I did. Yes, and judge for yourself – here is some stranger, who says that your family is interesting for him and he wants to shoot all of you (sometimes to visit your house). How many people would immediately agree to help him?

If you take the statistics – two or three persons answered me from each of a dozen messages I wrote. One or two families welcomed to become my heroes from a dozen of those, who firstly answered me. However, most of them immediately expressed their willingness to dress children in a national costume. In addition, according to my question what kind of family or cultural characteristics they observed in their family – puzzled shrug and said that they had nothing except costume.

Unfortunately, too little families keep even any family traditions (eg, Sunday dinners, recipes from their grandparents, and skills from father to son, etc.), and mind of their historical roots a fortiori. Perhaps this is because big city forces people to assimilate, to live in a different rhythm, subordinates its own rules. While searching for heroes to my project, I encountered hundreds of families who, unfortunately, could not “confirm” their national identity.

Granny's pie
© Yana Feldman
Please visit Saint-Petersburg, Childhood of many faces, by Yana Feldman for the full size image.

Of course, there were also positive responses. With the help of my friends, I suggested to contact a Georgian family, which as it turned out, through the generations from mother to daughter passed branded prescription hachapuri in Adjara.

With the help of social networks, I was lucky to find few more future heroes – a Tatar family, whose younger generation had settled in Saint-Petersburg long time ago, and great-grandparents lived near Kazan. However, they often come to visit her great-grandchildren, and great-grandfather (who was the religious head of his homeland) taught his great-grandson the precepts of holy book Koran with each visit.

A link of generation
© Yana Feldman
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In addition, with the help of social networks, and through the personal contacts I was able to meet and visit the calligraphy lesson in boarding school for the children of Japanese businesspersons and diplomats. At the Korean Cultural Center, where boys learned the tradition of drumming Buck. The Islamic center where young children from the Central Asian republics and the countries of central Africa were studying the Arabic alphabet, drawing the letters on the flour. The Armenian Church. I visited the Turkish and Sudanese families, where I could see the art of drawing with paint on the water – Ebru, as well as traditional outfits of young Sudanese girls.

The art of calligraphy
© Yana Feldman
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Random article in the newspaper about a family of ropewalkers who acted at festivals, fairs and public events in various cities of the CIS led me to be acquainted with this amazing family. Along with hundreds of other spectators, I was able to see how the young Seyfulla performed exercises on the trapeze (of course with the safety net). However, he was only 3.5 years!

Hereditary rope-walker
© Yana Feldman
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The most incredible adventure happened with me when I, accompanied by a volunteer travelled to Gypsy village on the suburbs of Saint-Petersburg. Before that trip, I had very vague thoughts who the Gypsies were, where and how they lived. In addition, of course, I could not even imagine then 20-30 miles from my house might be a big gypsy camp. I met several families, looked through the difficult conditions of their living. Nevertheless, I tried to depict on my photographs all that range of positive emotions and feelings that are unique to every kid.

Pumping water for cooking
© Yana Feldman
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There were many other equally interesting meetings and photo series. Sometimes the natives of big city never suspect the existence of some nations and nationalities, living together with them. Even they much less know about how that people live. Nevertheless, it is worthy of attention. This will help to build intercultural and interfaith dialogue, to present and reveal the life of the representatives of different nations, to remove stereotypes and clichés from the minds of different people.

It may seem that all my heroes are ordinary children, but of different age and appearance. However, it is not true. I set myself the task to open the door to the small world of every family, to be acquainted with the culture of each character, which is stored only inside and not visible from outside. Family, lifestyle, religion – all these are just begin to govern the children and we can only guess about his future fate.

Male from the birth
© Yana Feldman
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For me personally, in this project “Saint-Petersburg. Childhood of many faces” it was also important to preserve and pass on the aesthetics of the photographs. I did not make the task, and did not want to shoot and show the blood, dirt and any other thrill, which, unfortunately, sometimes common in modern documentary projects. After all, no matter what – the children always remain children. Nevertheless, at the same time, I specifically refused to shoot glamorous baby photo. Can you even suggest how family and cultural traditions in some way be related to the “puppet” kids?

Easter
© Yana Feldman
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Somewhere in the middle of a project, I decided that after the diploma work I would like to continue working over this project. By that time, it had already become a part of me. In addition, when I was offered (after graduating) to hold an exhibition at the gallery of the Saint-Petersburg State Academic Capella, I realized that I was ready to exhibit my project to the vast audience. I started preparing for the exhibition, which also became my first solo exhibition. The exhibition opened in mid-January 2013. A short time later, I was offered to present an exhibition in Minsk.

From myself I would like to wish all the readers: look for unusual ideas, do not dwell on the simple. Having found an exceptional story – in any case do not give in to difficulties! After all, the more ambitious and more complex you set a goal – the more pleasant you will be, when achieve it!

For more photos, please visit Yana Feldman website.

Africa inside
© Yana Feldman
Please visit Saint-Petersburg, Childhood of many faces, by Yana Feldman for the full size image.

Following text¹ and photographs by Alexandra Demenkova.

1.

I started to do my first photographic projects in Russia, in Saint-Petersburg and in the region, near the town where I was born. It happened naturally because of the fact that I didn’t have an opportunity to travel at the time, and it turned out to be a great advantage – I knew about the places which remain non-existant for most people, thus, in a way, I photographed a parallel reality. This became a continuous quest for exploration – meeting people who live hidden and unnoticed by society. One of the first places I went was an old people’s home.

Mental hospital in Peterhof, Russia, 2005
© Alexandra Demenkova
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This experience was eye-opening for me. It made me realise a lot of things, it made me think how fragile this world of relative stability created by our families is, how thin is the borderline between health, both mental and physical, and sickness; the normality of everyday life and misery; freedom and lifetime imprisonment. In the stories and in the lives of the people I saw hope and despair; all the possible emotions and situations that I heard or read of, now were not on the pages of the books, on a television screen, on a theatre stage, but here they were, in front of me, real, the first-hand experience of life, without any intermediaries.

Garbage dump in Kingisepp, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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Then I was able to expand, to do some travels to different regions of Russia, to start realizing what a huge country it is and come to thinking what this component is, besides the territory and language, that unites us and is common for all of us. Sometimes it felt like there was none, as if I was on another planet, even if I was in a village two hundred km away from Moscow. I met people who never traveled outside their villages; they would dream of going to Moscow or Saint- Petersburg, but would never be able to realise their dream.

Mental hospital in Neppovo, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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2.

Since I was a child the most remarkable time was holidays, travels by train across the country. Not the ones with my mother, those were rather regular ones, we always went to the same place and met the same people – my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunt, my cousin. No, these were not real adventures. Real adventures were when I traveled with my father or my grandmother, my father’s mother. Then, I had more freedom. And there was more variety in our trips. We went across the country to various places, staying with different families all the time. Both my father and grandmother were really good with people. For me these trips were the first experience of communicating with strangers of different ages, normally, adults, and making friends with them. I would walk along the coach and talk to other travelers or go to the compartment of the train attendant and talk to her (normally, it would be a woman). And, surely enough, I was thinking, I would like to do this job, when I grow up.

Mental hospital in Neppovo, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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The trains, the railway stations, night stops, arriving to new places at night, eating there, sleeping in a new bed, these things filled me with happiness, curiosity and impatience. The sound of the train departing, changes in the rhythm of the wheels, made my heart beat quicker with new expectations.

As I was growing up, I believed, the childish freshness of perception and emotions would disappear, but, time after time, they proved to have remained the same.

Gypsies, Novosokol'niki, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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When we would arrive to a new place, a village, I, normally shy and quiet, would go totally out of control, sometimes scaring animals at farms where we stayed, and once misbehaving till the point that relatives asked my father not to bring me there anymore. And, however seriously I promised my father and myself to behave, I was hardly ever able to keep the promise. There was something in the air – the smells, the atmosphere of the whole trip that prevented me from being quiet and well behaved. I would have fun at village weddings along with everyone else, watch and contemplate, see situations occurring amidst this wild merriment and drinking. All this filled me with excitement and desire to blend with it and be part of it.

Gypsy chidren, Iskitim, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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3.

The places I go now come into being by chance – a conversation with friends, a childhood memory, a talk between some strangers…

I hear a name of the place that sounds as an invitation, which is full of mystery and seems to come from a fairy tale. Say, “Unezhma”, a word tender and scary at the same time – a disappearing village on the White Sea, a remote one; to get there one needs to walk across the woods the whole day, and in winter you can’t get there or out of there at all. Or, a mental institution in a village; people in my place would make jokes of it, but none of us would ever go there and see what it is like. These are the places that would suddenly become fascinating for me. They would provoke in me an irresistible desire to go there.

Gypsy children, Iskitim, Russia, 2006
© Alexandra Demenkova
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You don’t know where you are going to sleep, whom you’ll have to share the room or even the couch with, if there would be any transport to get there or if you’d need to walk. Likewise, if you would be accepted, assumed to be a friend or an enemy, received as a stranger or as a fellow human being. You don’t know if people would trust you or be rather suspicious. You don’t know for how long you’d be able to stay there, or, for how long you’d want to stay. If by the time you’d leave you would be tired and longing to go away, or regret that you, presumably, are leaving forever, and would never see the people again, if you’d forget them and live on as if you never knew them, continue your own life just the same way as you did before, visit new places, whereas they would always stay there, till the end of their days, carry on their life with the very few changes, until they would die some of age or illness, others of drinking surrogate alcohol or in car accidents…

Funeral feast, Asureti Georgia, 2007
© Alexandra Demenkova
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But, sometimes, a phone call that seems surreal, a voice of a gypsy girl who accompanied me in one of the villages and who is going to marry soon, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, but, surely, long before she turns twenty, appear to be a small thread that connects us.

But, otherwise, there is an invisible thread that connects us forever; it is memory. And this thread, this connection exists even if there are no phones or computers or e-mails, no way to communicate at all. And, it seems impossible that there are places not connected with the outer world in any way.

Two buckets of water, Unezhma, Russia, 2007
© Alexandra Demenkova
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You may feel sorry for the people who live like that, in the everlasting poverty and without hopes for changes, but you feel happy that such places exist and you see that people who live there give each other and their children all their care and human warmth, instead of having computers as their best friends and scarcely talking to each other as it often happens in our homes. They are still able to gather around the table and talk for hours, and then, as there is no electricity and as you are far away from well lit with electric light cities, you can watch the stars, millions of stars, and feel that you are part of the universe.

A boy getting out of the water, Kastornoe, Russia, 2008
© Alexandra Demenkova
Please visit A parallel reality, by Alexandra Demenkova for the full size image.

Progress is a good thing, of course, and poverty should disappear once, and there should be left no places like this, but how great it is that that there are thousands of small and godforsaken places on Earth of which we never heard of and which we would never visit, but they exist, lost in space and time.

Maybe, once, they will become less poor, they will have houses with electricity and running water, and refrigerators, and microwaves, and many other things that we normally have, but would it make them any happier?

A shepherd and a horse, Krasnaya Dolina, Russia, 2008
© Alexandra Demenkova
Please visit A parallel reality, by Alexandra Demenkova for the full size image.

4.

For me photography became a means of dealing with people. It is one of the forms of communication and comprehension. I go to places and face situations which I wouldn’t encounter otherwise, without my camera. Sometimes I ask myself, what could be another capacity of mine that would allow me to meet the people, that could serve me as a licence to enter their lives, and I don’t find any answer.

Romka and Dimka, Kastornoe, Russia, 2008
© Alexandra Demenkova
Please visit A parallel reality, by Alexandra Demenkova for the full size image.

Sometimes I feel like a magician, sometimes – a worthless person who bothers them without any reason. In any case, I am glad that photography has happened to me; I became more than a spectator at the same time remaining only a spectator.
I think photography suits my temper a lot – I like the fact that every single picture is created in a fraction of a second.

When I photograph I feel much better than when I don’t. It is as if I start to feel the firm ground under my feet, or I forget that it’s not there at all. I believe, this explains everything.

Please find some more great photographs on Alexandra Demenkova website.

Woman in the field, Strugi, Russia, 2007
© Alexandra Demenkova
Please visit A parallel reality, by Alexandra Demenkova for the full size image.

1. Already published on the paper magazine “Kaze no Tabibito”, 2010 №6, vol.40, “Find the root”, Eurasia Travel Co., Ltd.

Text and photographs by Jens Olof Lasthein.

I was born three years after the Berlin Wall was built. My childhood was marked by the division of Europe, the sharp line between East and West. External political conflict shaped inner mental boundaries that had to be confronted – who are they; who are we?

I travelled through Eastern Europe for the first time in the summer of 1984. At the age of 20, I had long wanted to see what life was like on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the part of Europe I could only fantasise about growing up in the West. I didn’t doubt that the media image of a uniformly grey, comfortless world wasn’t the whole story, but I had little idea what to expect instead.

Transsylvania, Romania 2001
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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I travelled the way I always did in those days: by hitch hiking. Highways were practically non-existent, so drivers had no trouble stopping to pick me up and I made my way at a slow but steady pace. Afterwards, I still wasn’t sure if I knew the answer to my question about what it was like on the other side, but at least I had met many Eastern Europeans.

There was Dora, quiet but somehow intense, whom I met in a Budapest restaurant when she left her telephone number on a napkin. Later I would live with her in Kazincbarcika, and I can still see her before me as we waved farewell outside the petrochemical factory where she worked.

There was the frightened silence in Sibiu when someone whispered “Securitate!” And the German woman, Gerda, who didn’t waste time worrying about the secret police but invited me in for dinner, serving smoked blubber in her dirt-floored kitchen. There was Kapika and his friends from Zaïre who lived in a student dormitory in Cluj, laughing uproariously at everything while preparing a feast from bits of meat, some onions and a few tomatoes. Handsome Kapika, who had a child with one Romanian woman and was having an affair with another.

Odessa, Ukraine 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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There were the two East German girls I met out on the puszta, Hungary’s semi-desert steppe, where we spent a night camping out under the stars. Awakened by lightning, we set out walking through a dark and rainy night toward huge gas flames shooting into the sky – a factory out in the middle of nowhere. The guard couldn’t believe his eyes when we showed up at the gate, but he was kind enough to let us in to get dry.

There was the old man, so fat it was a wonder I could get both myself and my backpack into his Trabant, which had to stop every other kilometre to let the spark plugs dry.

There was Bogdan from Krakow, who picked me up in Czechoslovakia. He was one of the few people who consented to speak Russian, the only language we had in common. Most people refused, even though everyone learned it in school. He invited me to visit him in Poland, where he took me on a tour of the enormous Nowa Huta steelworks. A year later, Bogdan’s wife Halina wrote me a letter to say that he had died in an accident with the same Polski Fiat in which I had hitched a ride, leaving her alone with two small children.

Kaliningrad, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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There was the party in Katarina’s tiny apartment, where we squeezed together in her bed and sofa, enveloped in thick cigarette smoke, with Paweł Orkisz, always the life of the party, playing his guitar and alternating between his own songs and interpretations of Okudzhava and Vysotsky.

There was the Gypsy shepherd, who woke me early one morning as I slept under a tree, and had me watch the village cows while he ran off to buy a bottle of palinka brandy with my money.

There was Andrzej, whom I met at a café in Warsaw and who perhaps regretted inviting me home because his boyfriend Ryszard, a film photographer who always bought the drinks when we went out to bars, took a liking to me and spent most of the night trying to seduce me.

Tiraspol, Transnistria 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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And there was the charcoal burner Karoly, who had fled from society to live in the Bükk nature preserve, where I was regaled with warnings of the coming downfall of civilisation under the crushing weight of individualism and consumerism.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I remember the depressing sight of a Marlboro delivery lorry backing into Potsdamer Platz to bestow the long-deprived East Berliners with specially produced mini-packs of cigarettes. On the flip-top was printed: “Marlboro, the taste of freedom and adventure.”

A couple of years later the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and when I travelled to St. Petersburg in 1993, Russian society was just climbing out of the rubble of a collapsed system.

The years since then have seen new boundaries rise up between Europe’s east and west, and this is the borderland I have visited most recently, from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Isolated moments and fragments from these travels make up the images and tales in my book, White Sea Black Sea.

St. Petersburg – Tallinn, 1993

The train slows, finally coming to a stop. Outside is – nothing. I look questioningly at the jovial conductor with whom I am drinking tea and vodka in his tiny compartment.

“Hurry”, he says, pointing to a small station building with a light shining in one window.

We’ve come to the new border between Russia and Estonia.

St. Petersburg, Russia 1993
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Suddenly the tracks are overrun by people trying to be first into the little structure. Chaos breaks out, with yelling, swearing and jostling. Industrious men try to push through the crowd with bundles of passports. It’s impossible to know which window to go to, but it’s obvious the right decision has to be made quickly. Even though I’ve abandoned all courtesy and joined in the shoving, I’m pushed further and further towards the back.

Now the ticket checker is beside me, gesturing for my passport. He disappears, and a sense of unease falls over me. Then I see him, over by the entrance, with a distressed look on his face. He furiously waves me over, pressing my passport into my hand and running ahead of me to the train. We’re barely aboard before the whistle blows and the train begins to chug away. Everyone who has failed to get the required stamp is left behind, watching us disappear into the night.

Arkhangelsk, 2005

“Come on! We’ll do it like we did in school!”

The two festively dressed gents on the quay look surprised as a half-naked man who has just climbed out of a motorboat dances around them with clenched fists. They try to ignore him, but it’s no use. He won’t give up. Finally, one has had enough and beats him to the ground with several quick blows and a well-aimed kick to the head.

Five minutes later the underwear-clad man is back, going after the other partygoer with renewed energy. But this guy is no worse than his buddy. A crunch, and then a thump as the back of the drunk’s head hits the asphalt.

Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Arkhangelsk. The very name rings of permafrost, darkness, endless forests and icy wastelands. But now it’s a new town. I walk for days on end, and when my legs won’t carry me any longer, sometime after midnight, I futilely attempt to close out the sunlight with a bedspread over the window. By 7 o’clock I give up and pull on my shoes again.

There’s electricity in the air. The throngs of people crowding the beachfront walkway never seem to want to go home, choosing instead to take a stroll over to the unknown soldier’s eternal flame, or the go-cart track wedged between the pier and the disco boats. The annoying whine of two-stroke motors doesn’t stop until well past midnight. The scent of sjasjlik – grilled meat on a stick – hangs heavy in the warm evening air. The midnight sun perches stubbornly on the distant horizon, refusing to drop below the arms of the river delta.

Kaliningrad, 2007

The girls look about the same age as my daughter, maybe 11 or so. Like young girls everywhere, they try to look older with make-up and high heels, short skirts and silver belts. A torrential rain is falling, and the ancient drainage system – a holdover from the time when this seaport was known as Königsberg – doesn’t have a chance of carrying away all the water. We stand in a doorway to keep out of the downpour, but when the girls see puddles grow into lakes they can’t hold back any longer. They run out into the street, laughing and shrieking.

Kaliningrad, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Shoes come off, and on, and off again – the girls can’t get enough of this. Now they’ve discovered that the road at the bottom of the hill has turned into a river that cars can barely get through. There, soaked to the skin, they completely forget the limitations that make-up and heels place on older girls.

Sofiyovka, 2005

The air stands still between the houses, and the puddles are evaporating under a strong sun. The only sound is a distant hammering and the clucking of a few hens and geese behind a fence. A bread truck breaks the near-silence, pulling in on the patch of dirt to deliver crates of newly baked loaves to a shop in what I thought was a ghost town.

Laughter and loud voices. An engine starts and a dented old car tears away in a cloud of dust. Outside the youth centre, Aleksandr wonders if I’d like to come inside. Light falls in through ragged lace curtains in chilly rooms that might have once served as a pioneers’ meeting hall. A wood stove, a few chairs and a disassembled motorcycle are the only furnishings apart from a three-legged pool table with one corner propped up by a chair.

Sofijovka, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Aleksandr selects a cue, and with a crushing break shot sinks one ball. He moves to the other side of the table; I step around in the opposite direction. We have stopped speaking, and a curious tension builds with our slow movements around the table. Aleksandr ponders his next shot, sights along the length of the felt surface, changes his mind, goes back, aims carefully and shoots. He seldom misses.

Straightening his back, Aleksandr circles the table looking for a shot. He’s also moved into the right place for my shot – with a camera. “Stop,” I say. He looks up, and my lens pans slowly over the scene. When the motor stops humming, he cracks another ball into a corner pocket. Now whenever I like what I see through the viewfinder I just say “stop” and our eyes meet over the table for a long exposure, and then the game continues. I don’t know how long this goes on, but when I step outside into the hard sunlight it feels like I’ve been holding my breath for a very long time.

Stolnitsy, 2004

Alisa looks through the gate towards the high barbed-wire fence cutting across the main street a few dozen metres from her house. Has the neighbour on the other side come home yet?

Stolnitsy was once an ordinary Hungarian-speaking village under the dual monarchy. Then came World War I, and Stolnitsy became part of eastern Czechoslovakia. Nothing strange about that; borders in this corner of Europe have been moved fairly often during the course of history. But things got more complicated by the time World War II was over. The village was still Hungarian, but the Yalta Agreement gave the easternmost part of Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union. Stolnitsy was split down the middle, right over the main street, with barbed wire, mine fields and a guard tower.

Stolnitsy, border between Ukraine and Slovakia
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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And that’s how it remains when I come to visit Alisa. The mine fields are gone and the old guard tower stands empty, but the cruel wire fence is still there, patrolled now by Ukrainian border guards on this side and Slovakian EU soldiers on the other. So when Alisa wants to have a cup of coffee with her nearest neighbour, they stand on either side, giving the wire a respectful distance, shouting and gesticulating, both of them speaking Hungarian.

Chernyakhovsk, 2007

The boys are taking turns on their shared bicycle, sprinting around the block and spraying gravel when they brake. I commend the exquisite spoke decorations – red and orange plastic shooting stars. Now one of the lads is climbing along the gas pipes running over our heads. It’s obvious he’s done this may times before, but I can’t help feeling a bit anxious as I watch him balance up on those narrow tubes.

Chernyakhovsk, Russia 2007
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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The boys appear to be on their way someplace else, but they can’t seem to pull themselves away. I shout good-bye and begin walking away. One of them comes running after me.

“Have you got a bicycle at home?” He lights up when I say yes, sure I do. He kneels by his bike, pulling loose two plastic beads and a bright orange shooting star.

“Here you go,” he says proudly, and the two of them disappear between garages and wash lines.

“The Zone”, 2005

Bragin is an unassuming little town in Belarus, close by the border with the radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl. There are five exits from the traffic circle just south of the municipality, one of which features a guard shack and a boom. To the left, oddly, a parallel road runs straight into the Zone.

Esenyi, Chernobyl Zone, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Climbing out of the car a quarter-hour later, I can’t see the asphalt for the thick covering of leaves. Buildings are only partially visible behind the trees and bushes that have grown up unattended over the last two decades. A rusty sign points the way to what once was a side road. Roofs and walls have collapsed, and through a broken window to what must have once been a medical clinic I see a rusted gynaecology chair. There isn’t a sound.

I stop outside a school. The memorial to the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 looks lost and helpless. Suddenly, as if the projectionist had switched to the wrong reel in the middle of a film, the silence is broken by singing and laughter. Confused, I stumble out of the bushes and very nearly collide with two quite drunk ladies on bicycles. They laugh heartily when I ask if anyone actually lives around here, and point down the road before re-mounting their bikes. I drive in the direction they indicated.

Behind a high fence a dog is barking, high-pitched and angry. Strangers don’t often pass this way and when the gate opens and the dog comes bounding out, his excitement is so great he’s got an erection. Leonid and Vladimir have lived here all their lives. They don’t know where else to go, so when everyone else evacuated after the nuclear accident, they and a handful of other families simply stayed put. They grow their own potatoes and shrug off stories about radioactive uptake. Ivan comes by leading a horse and wagon loaded with planks. The red sun is low in late afternoon sky, and he’s already well and truly drunk. He slaps the horse’s rump and staggers off along the lonely road.

Back in the semi-darkness that has fallen over Bragin, I find what may have once been a better restaurant. On the menu is pork chops and potatoes. While I eat, the other guests are arguing over a bottle of vodka. One of the men pushes angrily away from the table, falling off his chair. His woman stumbles off in disgust.

Volhovshina, forbidden radioactive zone, Belarus 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Julia is a cancer physician at the local hospital, where I pay a visit to her tiny apartment. She’s gorgeous, and I’m more than happy to sit and chat while we drink Champagne – until her mobile phone suddenly rings. A fearful look crosses her face. No time for formalities now – the police have found out that I’m here and she shows me a back way out of town.

I travel a good distance northwards before stopping. In the darkness, under an impressively starry sky, the tension lets go.

Kegostrov, 2005

Stepping ashore from the riverboat that morning, I see the rusting hulks of old ships, lying where they’ve been drawn up on land and never put to sea again. I return to the wrecks at the same time two boys come riding up on their bikes. One is a couple of years older than the other, and both are named Alyosha. I feel an expectant, almost reverent tension in the air when I walk up and say hello. I need to be careful; it’s better to say too little than too much. I begin taking pictures, letting the tension build and keeping the boys’ gaze locked in mine.

The younger one is a little reserved and can’t seem to relax, but the older lad seems to possess an instinctive sense of self-worth. He opens up his rucksack to show me the day’s big find: a crow! It looks like one wing is broken, but it’s a living crow, which the elder Alyosha takes in his arms and pets before placing it on his shoulder. It flaps a bit, but stays put.

Kegostrov, Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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Using this panorama camera requires a fairly slow pace – each frame has to be wound forward – and we soon fall into a close, almost meditative co-operation. Each time I change film rolls, the older boy alters his pose, moves the bird, and asks with his eyes if this looks good. After a while the younger Alyosha falls into the game as well.

By the time I leave, they’re deeply into their own game: back and forth between the boats, up to the cabin, down in the hold. The crow has no choice but to follow along, occasionally being thrown into the air in well-meant but tortuous attempts to get him to fly.

Later that day I run into the older Alyosha in the garden in front of his house. He’s digging a grave for his bird.

Grigoriopol 2006

Heading north out of Grigoriopol, I happen to look down a small side road towards the river and see a man swimming with a goose under his arm. What a photo! I run, but just before I get there he releases the goose.

It turns out to be an old ferry dock. But the other side of the Dniester is now enemy territory. The barge no longer runs, instead lying rusted on the riverbank. The afternoon sun is warm, and the place has a strange atmosphere. Suddenly a horse-drawn wagon comes careening at high speed down the bank carrying Ivan, Grigorij and Ljuba – father, son and daughter-in-law.

Grigoriopol, Transnistria 2006
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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The plan is to wash some rugs and the horse, but first on the agenda is a picnic. As the watermelon is sliced and the vodka glasses are filled, they tell me of their friends and relatives on the other side of the river, in what used to be the same Soviet republic but is now another world – Moldova. They almost never see them any more. But they can live with that; they’d never consider moving from their breakaway republic.

Now it’s time to wash down the horse, and Grigorij rides him bareback, far out into the Dniester’s swirling currents. Next is a swim among the river’s geese, more vodka and cigarettes as afternoon turns to evening and we say farewell.

Much later, with darkness now fallen, I feel a twinge of melancholy as I cross the border at Dubăsari, leaving Transnistria, the last Soviet republic.

The new eastern edge of the European Union is not the sharp, merciless border of the Iron Curtain, but it remains palpable for everyone on both sides. Whether this new demarcation is an absolute one remains to be seen – and it’s up to us to decide how much we will allow it to affect our inner boundaries.

Every time I travel to the east, I re-live my first trip back in 1984. As foreign as the world on the other side may be, there’s always a strong but indefinable sense of coming home.

For more photographs please visit Jens Olof Lasthein website.

Arkhangelsk, Russia 2005
© Jens Olof Lasthein
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