Russia has often been photographed through distance: as a geopolitical abstraction, a territory reduced to symbols, power, and spectacle.
The five projects gathered here move in the opposite direction. They approach Russia from within everyday experience, personal memory, social fracture, and cultural continuity. Rather than constructing a unified portrait, they offer five partial, subjective readings that reveal a country shaped by contradiction, vulnerability, and unresolved tension.
In Stories of Russian Women; You Are Mine, Mary Gelman confronts violence not as an isolated act but as a systemic condition rooted in power imbalance. Her work exposes forms of control that are often normalized or rendered invisible: neglect, domination, silencing. Gelman’s photographs are inseparable from political reality. Domestic violence in Russia is not only widespread; it is structurally minimized by the state, both legally and rhetorically. By placing women’s stories at the center, Gelman reframes violence as a social mechanism rather than a private failure. The images resist sensationalism. Instead, they insist on recognition, revealing how power operates quietly, persistently, and with devastating consequences.
Sasha Velichko’s Songs of the Past turns toward the northern regions of Russia, where geography has preserved cultural memory through isolation. His work explores folklore, ritual, and daily life shaped by climate and remoteness. The North appears not as a frozen relic, but as a living continuum where traditions endure through practice rather than preservation. Harsh landscapes, impassable roads, forests, and water routes have limited external influence, allowing local identity to remain remarkably intact. Velichko’s images speak of continuity, patience, and a rhythm of life governed by nature rather than acceleration. Russia here is quiet, inward-looking, and deeply connected to its past.
In Suburban Areas of Russia, Igor Askarov documents spaces that exist outside symbolic centers. His photographs move through towns several hundred kilometers from Moscow, reached by long drives rather than official narratives. There is no declared subject, no sociological thesis. The work is driven by emotional experience and intuitive observation. Askarov’s use of a small rangefinder camera and film reinforces a discreet presence, allowing images to emerge from coexistence rather than intervention. These suburbs are neither romanticized nor dramatized. They appear as lived environments where photography becomes a way to remain attentive to fleeting, ordinary moments.
Ekaterina Vasilyeva’s Russian Season offers a poetic and introspective reading of national identity through landscape and symbolism. Winter becomes both setting and metaphor: a space of reflection, stillness, and emotional withdrawal. Drawing on fairy tales, folklore, and the aesthetics of abandonment, Vasilyeva constructs images that hover between reality and imagination. Snow-covered terrain is not merely environmental; it becomes a psychological state. Her work engages with a long tradition of associating the Russian soul with endurance, dreaming, and distance from immediacy. At the same time, the changing climate introduces friction, turning the idealized winter into a fragile and contested image.
In History of Russia, Svetlana Makoveeva approaches national identity through reenactment and temporal layering. By photographing individuals who reconstruct different historical periods, she explores how the past functions as a stabilizing reference in an uncertain present. These figures, dressed in historical costume, appear unexpectedly integrated into contemporary urban environments. The images suggest that identity is not anchored in linear time, but assembled through selective memory. The past becomes a tool for orientation rather than nostalgia. Makoveeva’s work reveals how historical imagination shapes present-day belonging, offering continuity where political narratives fail to do so.
Taken together, these five projects resist simplification. They do not attempt to define Russia as a single entity, nor do they resolve its contradictions. Instead, they reveal a country experienced through gendered violence, cultural memory, peripheral spaces, symbolic landscapes, and historical reconstruction. Each photographer operates from a personal position, yet their works intersect in meaningful ways.
What emerges is not an official image of Russia, but a fragmented, human one. A Russia where power and vulnerability coexist. Where tradition survives through isolation. Where everyday life unfolds far from centers of authority. Where seasons carry emotional weight. Where the past remains active in shaping the present.
These photographers remind us that national identity is never singular. It is lived, contested, and constantly rewritten through personal experience. Their images do not explain Russia. They listen to it, from within.
Stories of Russian women; You are mine by Mary Gelman
These stories are about power and control of one person over another. They are about difficulties of recognizing violence and to resist it on personal and government level. Because violence is not only when somebody smashes your face with fist, it is also when somebody ignores, controls, or neglects your will. This series shows that one of important reasons of violence is imbalance of power, and not orientation, age or education. Russia has a high level of violence against women. According to statistics of the Interior Ministry of Russian Federation, in 2013 women comprised 91 % of overall number of victims of domestic violence crime. Women suffer from grievous bodily harm 8 times more often than man. Problem of violence has a mass character. But the government does not recognize the problem. Russia does not have the law against domestic violence. In July, the President Vladimir Putin signed the law project about partial decriminalization of battery and payment of alimonies… Read More
Songs of the past by Sasha Velichko
The North of Russia abounds with history, folklore and mythology. Seclusion of these lands from the central regions had a substancial impact on how people save and cherish their artistic and folk heritage from the old days. The idle cultural expansion from the mainland hardly had a strong impact on the local ways, and nothing disrupted the natural flow of life for the northerners. Family customs, beliefs and traditions, clothing and speech had remained mostly untouched since the past. The very nature and terrain had a say in it as well. Severe climate conditions and harsh landscapes complicated the connections of the smaller villages to the outer world: impassable woods and swamps, ruined roads, ubiquitous lakes and the White Sea – all that stimulated an own brand of isolation. At the same time, the peace and tranquility of the North instilled a unique set of qualities in its inhabitants. The natural beauty inspired and strengthened peoples’ love towards creativity and art in all its manifestations and instances…Read More
Suburban areas of Russia by Igor Askarov
This work was made during the last year. I explored several suburban areas of Russia. All of them are 300-400 km away from Moscow. Most of the time I went by car. There is no special or unique subject behind this work and the most important thing I know is I did all this trips to fulfill the moments of greatest emotional experience I went through with photography. It almost never happens that I ask for permission to take a picture, I prefer to stay in harmony with the environment and people that fill it. Small cheap-looking and silent rangefinder camera is a must for this kind of photography. I shoot film, develop and print in my kitchen during my free time… Read More
Personal project; Russian Season by Ekaterina Vasilyeva
For me the ‘Russian Season’ is a personal project and I take the pictures from my understanding and vision of Russian nature and Russian soul. Certain illustrations of this series especially refer the viewer to Russian fairy tales and folklore. It is also close to me, this connection of a certain abandonment, mystery and aesthetics of the snow-covered Russia. I think winter is in general a very Russian concept, a very Russian condition, and a very Russian space. In the love of winter is manifested a special concept of our national character: dreaming, reflection and detachment. Snow-covered space symbolizes the so beloved, typically Russian rest and sleep. Unfortunately, the winter in St. Petersburg is often characterized by high humidity, with wet and almost melting snow these last years. I think that it is also for me a kind of challenge—to create the perfect image of winter… Read More
History of Russia by Makoveeva Svetlana
This project brings together 14 of the characters involved in the reconstruction of various periods of Russian history: from the 9th century when we find the earliest mention of the Ancient Russia, until the end of the second world war. Each of them chose for favourite era and of modernity hashtags – keywords that most accurately reflect the spirit of the time.None of the project participants would not want to live in the past, but they have a lot of ideas about what from the past can add to modern Russia.As shown by the interviews, people involved in historical reconstruction are aware of their national identity. An appeal to the pastgives people a greater sense of stability in the present. And, oddly enough, people in historical clothes look most harmoniously against the walls of a modern building and better integrated into the surrounding urban environment. This is partly a reflection of their inner state… Read More
