Corruption is without a doubt the most topical issue in Russia today, with destructive effects on the national economy and public institutions. The National Anticorruption Committee estimates the corruption market in Russia at around $300 billion a year, while human rights activists claim that corruption accounts for up to 50 percent of the country’s GDP. Transparency International ranks Russia 122nd of 177 countries in its 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index.
IMR seeks not only to expose the scale of the corruption, but also to make people think of the consequences of corruption practices. Most Russians have grown to believe that corruption is an inevitable evil, and even those who recognize its absurdity nonetheless cannot imagine their lives without it.
As part of its anticorruption efforts, IMR commissioned Photo 51: Is Corruption in Russia’s DNA? This project, which examines the deep, underlying roots of corruption in Russian society, consists of a series of photographs taken by Misha Friedman, a renowned New York photographer, in various parts of Russia. “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 and, metaphorically speaking, has become a part of the country’s DNA.
In March 2013, the Photo 51 exhibition premiered in New York at the 287 Spring Gallery. In October, it was showcased at the Tallinn Portrait Gallery in Estonia as part of the Prison and Freedom exhibit dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. After that, the project was featured at the Mediaudar Festival in Moscow. Currently, IMR is working with the University of Michigan to showcase Misha Friedman’s exhibit in Ann Arbor’s Work Gallery in May 2015.
