penguinist

lostinpublications:

The series “At Dusk” from 1993, was created immediately after the collapse of the USSR, and was taken with a wide-format panoramic camera. It talks about the radical social changes that occurred in the nineties in the former Soviet Union, which left many people hopeless.

“1941. I was three years old and I can still remember the bombings, the howling sirens and the searchlights in the wonderful, dark-blue sky. Blue, blue, light-blue…

For some reason we think that one generation will be spared a war. I see this blue series as the second. The population of the city has shrunk to 250,000 inhabitants. Fifty to eighty per cent of the factories and plants have shut down. More people are dying than being born. For a long time the dead were buried in polyethylene bags. You have to bring your own sheets, syringes, medicine, etc with you to the maternity home. The rats are the first to leave the sinking ship. These little animals…

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

Everybody knows that the old people have to die first… My son Iljuscha has been living in another country for three years. Thirty people have frozen to death on the streets. This prompted my friend to open an exhibition. Homes were not heated for three long winter months at minus 22 degrees. A nineteen-year-old girl stole my shoes in the train. Having woken up by chance, I caught up with her bare-foot at the end of the carriage.

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

Perhaps I should emigrate and live with the French? The door to my relatives’ home was broken down and their home was burgled. You are scared to enter a dark hallway. The bank does not return the money. Everything stinks of urine. But an acquaintance of mine, a photographer, has opened a restaurant and sold his camera. Another breeds dogs. A third heals people.

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

1994–1995. People earn four times as much, the average salary is now around $50. But it has not been paid for months. Prices rise. They are almost as high as in New York or Berlin. There are more and more shops with Western goods. There are people who shop there. Is it perhaps a good thing that fewer people will live here in future?

But more Chinese people? “Everything will turn out fine,” the radio broadcaster says today. I have forgotten something. The sewerage system stopped working in the summer. Soldiers watch out that nobody bathes in the river. Many people have diarrhoea, but cholera has not broken out. We are pleasantly surprised that tumbledown houses in the city centre are being renovated.

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

“At Dusk”, 1993” © Boris Mikhailov/Suzanne Tarasieve Paris

Pregnant women often find it difficult to cross the road because of heavy traffic. I have already seen a picture for the new pink book, at dawn: A woman held up her new-born son by the foot, then lifted it up above her head, and he suddenly looked like a Buddha. The woman kissed him.

A new life has been born.”

- Boris Mikhailov