Young Russia

In 2004 I started the essay about Russia. Since my first visit, I realized that as for outsider from Western Europe (Poland is considered by Russians as Western Europe) it’s impossible to comprehend this huge and complex country as a whole. I’ve decided to pick one narrow but important group. I focused on Russian generation grown up after the collapse of Soviet Union. For most of these people, USSR was a very early childhood. They are used to open borders and western pop culture flooding their homeland. Young Russians I photographed are the representatives of newborn middle class. I’ve tried to avoid picturing the contrasts so characteristic for the transition of 90-ties. I was not interested either in narrow margin of golden Russian youth or the poverty of Russian province and country side. For 4 years, I have been exploring the daily life of young people all over the country with the special focus on Siberian cities. At the beginning I tried to cover as many situations as possible. I registered correction camps for juveniles, cadet’s schools, local festivals, parties and many ordinary, daily scenes. Many of young Russians I photographed have become my friends. With each journey I came back and photographed them again. The project became more intimate. I realized that I have few heroes I wanted to talk about. All of them are between 20-30 years old and all of them are different characters. I believe these few private stories can say more about the young Russian generation than a thousand of random images. I come from the country, which belonged to former Soviet block and I also experienced the transition over a dozen years ago. That’s why I decided to observe my Russian equals lives and hopefully understand them as much as possible.

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