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HIV/AIDS and TB Awareness Initiative
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In 2011, IMR launched an initiative to raise awareness of the disastrous state of affairs regarding HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Russia. Russia has become a world leader in TB and currently, following India and China, has the largest number of multidrug-resistant TB cases. In most first-world nations, HIV/AIDS and TB have been taken under state control, have ceased to be taboo subjects, and have been destigmatized. This is not the case in Russia or the former Soviet republics, where independent observers report that the incidences of TB and HIV/AIDS have reached epidemic levels. But despite these grim figures, the authorities have not only ignored this problem but are actively suppressing information surrounding it. People are largely unaware that a significant proportion of Russians are TB carriers.
In the face of scarce information about the epidemic, New York–based photographer Misha Friedman has presented IMR with a valuable resource: a series of photographs taken beginning in 2008 that document the lives and inadequate treatment of HIV/AIDS and TB patients in the Caucasus, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. In the autumn of 2011, with IMR’s support, Friedman expanded his project, visiting and photographing TB hospitals in St. Petersburg and Togliatti, Russia.
Over the course of 2012, IMR sponsored a series of exhibitions in the United States, the European Union, and Russia to showcase Friedman’s works and draw public attention to this acute social problem.
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Political Art Show: Russian Visionaries
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Russian Visionaries was a multimedia art project that displayed portraits of modern Russian thought leaders alongside their predictions for the future of Russia after the 2012 presidential election. The project was sponsored and developed by IMR and showcased in New York, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris in 2011 and 2012.
The central pieces of the project were the austere black and white photographs taken by Kirill Nikitenko, a well-known Moscow photographer. Among the 54 photographs were portraits of prominent Russian writers, actors, journalists, economists, politicians, and human rights activists known for their strong independent views and their opposition to the current regime. Their ranks included Boris Akunin, Alexei Navalny, Leonid Parfyonov, Sergei Parkhomenko, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Yuri Shevchuk, Garry Kasparov, Yevgeny Yasin, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Lev Ponomarev, and many others.
All the participants shared their predictions of Russia’s future if Vladimir Putin remains in power. These predictions were presented alongside the portraits. Incidentally, the show coincided with the unprecedented mass opposition rallies that began in Russia in December 2011 and lasted through the winter and spring of 2012.
The original idea to bring together Russian intellectual leaders came from Elena Khodorkovskaya, the former wife of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner, who was finally released in December 2013.
