Moscow, Witness City
I arrived to Moscow in 2003 winter. I stay in the city for 15 days. My all idea was to photograph daily life, people of the new generation in the streets. After this trip I decided to go back to Moscow to see more ground level street life and city people. Second time was 2004 summer for 3 months.
After all those years of communist regime, sufferings, brotherhood and given one of the history's biggest ideological war against almost all the rest of the capitalist world I found a very tired nation on the streets of the big capital.
Change was still big wave on the culture and people. Division of new generation is radical. Old generation trying to keep what they saved economically after perestroyka ; elder almost just have their believes left to the idea of communism, old times nostalgia on their empty poor hands (the monthly pension of a old retired worker is around 10-15 dollars). Young people fighting for to get a job in some international companies, that's almost only way to survive in this strong city or only way to set a life somewhere else around the world. Most popular University Departments are political sciences, economy and mathematics, recently foreign languages such as Chinese took importance, because of the foreign policy of Russia.
Big city is the witness of many other aspects of social injustice everyday. Unemployed young rates getting higher for the last ten years. Banks are giving small amounts of credits to new investors to build a whole new company. But money has to be payed back in a year. So none of the small investors can not take that risk for a year. Thats one of the reasons that foreign investment needed.
Electronic criminality is wide spread. On the last week I spent there ıt was very easy to buy a cd-rom on the metro for five dollars which contains all the tax records addresses of the people and their income informations for the last year. So if you're a clever thief you can simply get those cd-rom to decide who you are going to theft.
However all those matters looks a little chaotic but on the other hand there is still a fact of great intellectual spirit of communism. Prime time on the metro everybody is reading. Hunger for all those years of obscurity literature was the great answer and still it is.
Four workers going back from work to their home. All are sleeping in the last metro. One waking up, opening the water bottle taking a sup from water and waking up the one left of him sleeping on his shoulder and giving him the bottle, he's doing the same and till the fourth worker, bottle shared now back to sleep to rest.
After all those years of communist regime, sufferings, brotherhood and given one of the history's biggest ideological war against almost all the rest of the capitalist world I found a very tired nation on the streets of the big capital.
Change was still big wave on the culture and people. Division of new generation is radical. Old generation trying to keep what they saved economically after perestroyka ; elder almost just have their believes left to the idea of communism, old times nostalgia on their empty poor hands (the monthly pension of a old retired worker is around 10-15 dollars). Young people fighting for to get a job in some international companies, that's almost only way to survive in this strong city or only way to set a life somewhere else around the world. Most popular University Departments are political sciences, economy and mathematics, recently foreign languages such as Chinese took importance, because of the foreign policy of Russia.
Big city is the witness of many other aspects of social injustice everyday. Unemployed young rates getting higher for the last ten years. Banks are giving small amounts of credits to new investors to build a whole new company. But money has to be payed back in a year. So none of the small investors can not take that risk for a year. Thats one of the reasons that foreign investment needed.
Electronic criminality is wide spread. On the last week I spent there ıt was very easy to buy a cd-rom on the metro for five dollars which contains all the tax records addresses of the people and their income informations for the last year. So if you're a clever thief you can simply get those cd-rom to decide who you are going to theft.
However all those matters looks a little chaotic but on the other hand there is still a fact of great intellectual spirit of communism. Prime time on the metro everybody is reading. Hunger for all those years of obscurity literature was the great answer and still it is.
Four workers going back from work to their home. All are sleeping in the last metro. One waking up, opening the water bottle taking a sup from water and waking up the one left of him sleeping on his shoulder and giving him the bottle, he's doing the same and till the fourth worker, bottle shared now back to sleep to rest.
