Latest Articles

20 years under Putin: a timeline

Institute of Modern Russia
Details
News

Photo 51 Project: “Is Corruption in Russia’s DNA?”

Details

On December 18th, one of the gravest problems of today’s Russia—corruption—was visualized and discussed in New York’s Half King bar where Misha Friedman, an up-and-coming New York photographer, presented his recent works at a preview of his Photo 51 Project. He was joined by Peter Klebnikov, Chief Editor at the Environmental Defense Fund, and Anna Van Lenten, co-curator of photography series at Half King. The Photo 51 Project is sponsored by the Institute of Modern Russia; it will premiere on February 15th at 287 Spring Gallery in New York.

 

Just outside the “closed city” of Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk Region), a group of teenagers marked off their camp site with caution tape. Severe limits on private property in the Soviet Union made Russians prone to staking and fencing off anything they deem their own. Even years after the fall of the Soviet Union, such paranoia still governs much of daily life.
A security guard in the Konstantinov Palace in St. Petersburg, one of Mr. Putin’s official residences. The palace was built in the 18th century, fell into disrepair, and was then reconstructed in 2001 with “donations” apparently demanded from private companies, which are acknowledged on a gilded plaque inside. The renovation began shortly after Mr. Putin’s inauguration to his first term as president. Now, for a price, anyone can rent it out.
On a tree trunk in a forest outside Medvezhyegorsk, Republic of Karelia, hangs a photograph of one of the countless political prisoners who died at this mass execution and burial site in the late 1930s. A few feet away stands a monument to the dead - victims of Solovki, the most infamous of the Gulag prison camps. It reads “People, remember us! Don’t kill each other!” The Russian government has made no effort to recover or identify the individual remains of the Gulag inmates who are known to have perished here.
A young man beats a woman on a Moscow street, while police and bystanders look on without intervening. Moscow’s Anna National Center for the Prevention of Violence reported in 2012 that a third of Russian women suffer domestic violence and that it kills as many as 14,000 of them each year—around four times more per capita than in the United States.
Bychiy Island on the Neva River has long been home to a children’s ecological school and student yacht club. It is now being developed into a private, 0 million judo mega-complex, headed by Arkady Rotenberg, President Putin’s childhood sparring partner. Putin, a black belt in judo, serves as the club’s honorary president. In other ways, Putin ensures that local governments are stocked with supportive civil servants. To run for regional gubernatorial office, candidates need first to get approval of 5 to 10 percent of local legislators. Since the majority of local parliaments are composed of pro-Kremlin officials, only pro-Kremlin people get chosen to run.
A window of an abandoned mosque in the village of Muslyumovo. This village was on the banks of the Techa River in Russia’s Ural Mountains, which for many years was a dumping ground for lethal radioactive waste from the Mayak nuclear complex, located less than an hour’s drive from Muslyumovo.
Windows of this dilapidated apartment block in St. Petersburg are covered by steel plates. Officially, the building should stay vacant and be reconstructed, but unofficially, hundred of illegal migrants are housed in it. Hence, the CCTV camera for the owners to watch over their “slave labor.”

Just outside the “closed city” of Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk Region), a group of teenagers marked off their camp site with caution tape. Severe limits on private property in the Soviet Union made Russians prone to staking and fencing off anything they deem their own. Even years after the fall of the Soviet Union, such paranoia still governs much of daily life.

 

In an introduction to the slideshow of his photographs, Misha Friedman explained why the project is entitled Photo 51. Originally, Photo 51 was a nickname for the first X-ray diffraction image taken in 1952 that provided a breakthrough for researchers trying to model the structure of DNA. In today’s Russia, corruption has penetrated to the very core of society, at every level of people’s lives and daily routines, and, metaphorically speaking, became a part of Russia’s DNA.

“When I began this project, the key problem was how to visualize corruption. There are basic symbols, but I was not after the obvious,” Friedman said. “I went on several trips to Russia – to St. Petersburg and Moscow, to little towns of Karelia and the Urals. Once there, it took no more than a drive or a walk to see that corruption [is] manifested everywhere.”

The problem, as Friedman explained, is that most Russians don’t acknowledge that corruption has become a Russian institution, upon which all other institutions run. “Business, education, police, military, medical and judicial operations don’t happen without patron-client transactions. And while this state of affairs has always ruled, since Putin came to power, the government’s grip in all arenas has ensured that corruption is coded into the entire state and civic apparatus.” As Friedman pointed out, the blame belongs not only to bribery itself, but also to the acceptance of this situation in society.

In the last 10 years, corruption in Russia has been going viral at all levels—government, business, public and personal.

In the course of the slideshow that followed, Peter Klebnikov observed that the content of Friedman’s photographs projects a sense of deep misery: a Russian forest where thousands of GULAG prisoners were executed; a former NKVD building that now serves as a market; a medical committee for the army for draft-age men; a scene of street violence; a city jail adjacent to an apartment building; a village polluted with nuclear waste; and, of course, the infamous Russian roads. “It’s a landscape of decay, and the depicted sites are symbols of a failed state,” Klebnikov said. Referring to the fact that most Russians are in denial about the disastrous state of affairs in their country, he added that dignity is easy to lose, but the person who lost it is the last to know.

The Photo 51 Project is a part of IMR’s efforts to raise awareness of the devastating effect corruption has on Russia’s state and society. In the last 10 years, corruption in Russia has been going viral at all levels—government, business, public and personal. Reports from Transparency International indicate that Russia's ranking on the Corruption Perception Index has fell from 71 (out of 102 countries) in 2002 to 133 (out of 172 countries) in 2012. One of the underlying reasons for this dismal statistic is that people have gotten too familiar with the phenomenon. Having to deal with corruption on the daily basis has almost made it a societal norm. Although fighting corruption at the governmental and institutional level is a necessary step, Russian citizens mist also understand the connection between their own actions and the decaying of their country. Misha Friedman's works help visualize that link.

Print
© 2024 Institute of Modern Russia, Inc.