YAROSLAVL, RUSSIA
1991
In 1991 I visited Burlington's sister
city of
Yaroslavl
in what was then the Societ Union. My plan was to produce series of
images
like the ones I had made in Burlington's other sister city of Puerto
Cabezas,
Nicaragua. The region at the time was represented in the US media by
images
of sullen people, bread lines, and overberaring military men. I spent
the
spring months meeting many ordinary Russians: students, cooks, firemen,
television producers, ice fishermen, wedding couples, etc. and
exhibited
photographs as I made them in windows of storefronts along a business
thoroughfare.
Russians were indtrigued with the pictures, wondering both at the
unusual
venue for showing photographs and about my choice to show pictures of
"unimportant"
people, this being an era when public images in Russia were primarily
of
politicians, military personnel, and heroic workers.
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