CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN: Lost Territories - photo project in Central Asia. By SPUTNIK PHOTOS (indiegogo.com)

(indiegogo.com) 5 photographers, 5 exciting stories from post soviet countries in Central Asia.


Lost Territories - crowdfunding campaign from SPUTNIK PHOTOS on Vimeo.

Please support this project here - indiegogo.com >>>


Who are we?

Sputnik Photos is an international collective founded in 2006 by documentary photographers from Central and Eastern Europe. We are united by a desire to observe and describe what surrounds us, as well as by our common experience of living in post-transformation countries.

Our achievements to date include important international awards, such as World Press Photo and Pictures of the Year International. Together we have organized several exhibitions around the world and published 8 photobooks. Our projects have been featured at photography festivals, in galleries and magazines worldwide. 

About our project.

We would like to invite you to support our artistic project in post-soviet countries of Central Asia. Twenty-five years after the fall of the USSR five Sputnik Photos photographers are setting out on a journey to five former soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

For a number of years, we have been documenting changes taking place in post-communist countries, particularly in the former republics of the Soviet Union, always referring to our own individual experience of the transformation period. Recently, we have focused on Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia, Armenia and Georgia. In the face of an increasing political tension in the region, photography documenting everyday life, and the changes and myths of the countries still falling under Russian influence, becomes even more relevant. 

Rafal Milach - from the series “Black sea of concrete.”

At the current stage, we are planning further trips to the former Soviet empire, focusing on Central Asia, and we hope you will support our efforts.

We are interested in what is happening in the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, and still remain under Russian influence, because their history is also our history and it concerns us directly. We are immersing ourselves in this complex and multi-faceted world. We are uncovering the nations’ nostalgia for the empire, their drive to democracy, traces of former propaganda, poverty, but also the emergence of the new and hope for a better future. We are aware that our project will give neither a diagnosis nor simple and straightforward answers to the questions relevant for the region. Yet, we want to make discoveries and show them to others. We believe that 25 years after the change is a perfect time to sum up the efforts our nations have made to date.

Your help can make it happen! 

Agnieszka Rayss - from the series "I reminesce and cry for life."

The funds raised will enable each of us to go on a single trip to one of the countries we focus on:

Kazakhstan: Agnieszka Rayss

Uzbekistan: Michał Łuczak

Turkmenistan: Rafał Milach

Tajikistan: Adam Pańczuk

Kyrgyzstan: Jan Brykczyński 

Adam Panczuk - from the sersies "I_AM_IN_VOGUE@BELARUS.BY".

The amount will cover return flights, films, their developing and scanning, accommodation and guides. In other words, a minimum that allows 5 people to make 5 independent trips and create 5 extraordinary stories. 

Jan Brykczynski - from the series "Primary forest".

The project will be rounded off in 2016 by a mobile exhibition and a photobook for audiences across the globe. It will show all the 15 countries that used to be part of the USSR. 

Michal Luczak - from the series "Spitak".

more:
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A TIMELY EXHIBITION: Legacy at Side Gallery - Russia, Ukraine, Georgia & South Caucasus. Curated by George Georgiou

Legacy at Side Gallery, curated by George Georgiou, celebrates some of the best documentary photography coming out of this torn and fertile ground.

The second of Side Gallery’s Eurovisions exhibitions, linked to the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Legacy looks at the new East-West borderlands of the former Soviet Union republics. Struggles for independence and identity take place against the intensifying backdrop of a geo-political battle between Russia and European Union. — mit Mila Teshaieva, Oksana Yushko, Kerry Side-Gallery, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Rafal Milach, Maria Morina, Donald Weber, Olga Kravets und Lucia Ganieva hier: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

CURRENT EXHIBITION

(amber-online.com/side-gallery) LEGACY: Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, & The Caucasus

George Georgiou, Lucia Ganieva, Mila Teshaieva, Rafal Milach, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Donald Weber, Olga Kravets, Maria Morina, Oksana Yushko, Alexander Chekmenev

Saturday 17 May - Sunday 20 July

The second of Side Gallery’s Eurovisions exhibitions, linked to the 25th anniversary of the coming down of the Berlin Wall, Legacy looks at the new East-West borderlands of the former Soviet Union republics. Struggles for independence and identity take place against the intensifying backdrop of a geo-political battle between Russia and European Union. Through a series of imaginative landscapes the exhibition explores shared histories, isolation and engagement, tradition and the desire for modernity.

Curated by George Georgiou, who brings his own work, IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEAR, it celebrates some of the best documentary photography coming out of this torn and fertile ground.

In Udmurtia, in the heart of the Russian landmass, Lucia Ganieva explores DREAMING WALLS, the exotic photolandscapes opening up from domestic interiors that are a recurring motif throughout the region. From her Caspian Sea project, PROMISING WATERS, Mila Teshaieva shows her work on Azerbaijan, its vast oil and gas reserves shape shaping the senses of both state power and individual insecurity.

In BLACK SEA CONCRETE, Rafal Milach explores Ukraine and Crimea: ‘Once the whole Soviet Union took its holidays in the resorts of the Black Sea. Soviet vacationers left behind Soviet architecture, mentality and sentiment.’ Fellow Polish member of the international collective Sputnik Photos, Justyna Mielnikiewicz has lived in Georgia for 12 years – WOMAN WITH A MONKEY is her tribute to an ‘unpredictable, timeless, Fellini-esque country, both cruel and hilarious.’

Donald Weber’s INTERROGATIONS opens up on the policemen, working girls, thugs, dissidents and hustlers in Ukranian police stations, their disturbing portraits expanding or sense of what it means to be a bit part in the dark opera of encounters with power. In GROZNY: NINE CITIES, members of the Russian photography collective Verso Images, Olga Kravets, Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko have created a multimedia photo novel exploring the different aspects of the Chechnyan city reduced to rubble in two wars.

Legacy was planned in 2013, before the events in Ukraine, which continue to unfold. The portraits in Ukranian photographer Alexander Chekmenev’s WARRIORS are from the barricades of Euromaidan in Kiev and were taken during the February revolution.

NEW: Brief Photobook Reviews (Week 41, 2012). By Joerg Colberg (jmcolberg.com)

In this case ... the book is about Belarus, I know ... but the book is fantastic - with the great polish photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz (a resident in Tbilisi) 
 

(jmcolberg.com) Sputnik Photos is a collective of photojournalists from Central/Eastern Europe. For Stand By, Andrei Liankevich, Agnieszka Rayss, Jan Brykczynski, Adam Panczuk, Rafal Milach, Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Manca Juvan went to Belarus, often called “the last dictatorship in Europe.” Given the diversity of the participating photographers and the complexity of the subject matter, the resulting book is a surprisingly coherent and interesting affair. In fact, my sole complaint would be that it took me a while to figure out it was about Belarus (I might be just a bit dense, but a word at the beginning might have helped). This little detail aside, the book comprises the whole spectrum of contemporary documentary/photojournalistic practice, and it’s done very, very smartly. Magnum et al. might want to take note: There are some smart new players in town, and work like Stand By shows that you don’t have to try to be cool on a Tumblr to show that you’re relevant.

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Stand By is the most recent project by Sputnik Photos photographers: Andrei Liankevich, Agnieszka Rayss, Jan Brykczynski, Adam Panczuk, Rafal Milach, Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Manca Juvan. With this book and upcoming exhibitions photographers try to fill the gup in visuall story telling about Belarus and figure out what is behind the slogan of "last dictatorship in Europe". Up-coming exhibition in fall 2012.  

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(photolia.tumblr.com) Stand By. Various photographers.
Photographs by Andrei Liankevich (Belarus), Rafal Milach (Poland), Adam Panczuk (Poland), Agnieszka Rayss (Poland), Manca Juvan (Slovenia), Jan Brykczynski (Poland), Justyna Mielnikiewicz (Poland)

Text by Victor Martinovich (English and Belarusian)

Concept and Design by Ania Nalecka / Tapir Book Design
Published by Sputnik Photos, Warsaw, Poland, 2012. Limited edition of 1,000 copies.
[Purchase: Sputnik Photos]

Stand By is a book about Belarus, its people, culture, everyday life, search for identity. Seven photographers (Belarus, Poland and Slovenia) present their stories/vision on the country: war, landscape, fashion, war veterans, immigration. The title Stand By symbolises “ready and waiting” state (reminds another recent book on Belarus The Waiting Room by Bill Crandall). It also refers to a widely used propaganda slogan “For Belarus” (BY is a country code for Belarus).

Belarusian photographer Andrei Liankevich explores symbols and presence of war in the Belarusian society and asks questions about his own identity. “War has never been anything close to me in emotional sense. It was a story about “every fourth man who died in Belarus”. But I have never sensed it personally. There was no sorrow, no pain. I have always asked myself: “why is the war such a widely discussed subject?”

Rafal Milach captures people’s homes and their stories. Adam Panczuk learns about Belarusians by their distinct fashion styles. “Once there, I started out with what jumped out at first sight - the care Belarusians took of their dress”.
Agnieszka Rayss photographs female war veterans: beautiful portraits and touching stories. Manca Juvan (Slovenia) talks to the Belarusian community in New York.

Jan Brykczynski is curious about the Bialowieza National Park. In his essay “Primary Forest” he shows how Belarusians recreate elements of the Forest in their home interiors (paintings, carpets, stuffed animals).

Justyna Mielnikiewicz’s project “City of Women” shows Belarusian girls who use matrimonial agency run by Maya Cherkova to find a husband. “Her agency, Gimeney, is not the quintessential meat market where repugnant Westerners purchase young Slavic beauties for trophy wives. <…> Their stories dispel many of the myths about matrimonial agencies and reveal the deeper social conditions peculiar both to this specific region and Belarus as a whole, where man are spoiled by an abiding myriad of beautiful women, the western concept if feminism is relative to Belarusian relality”.

Stand By is a strong work and a beautiful photobook. The book has an elegant design (slightly different for each essay) and interesting picture editing. It shows fascinating and mostly unknown to outside world layers of Belarusian society/people.

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Regina Anzenberger (www.anzenberger.com): Eine Neuerscheinung, die mir sehr gut gefällt, ist das Buch „STAND BY“ über Weißrussland des osteuropäischen Sputnik Photo Kollektivs, an dem Fotografen wie Andrei Liankevich, Agnieszka Rayss, Rafal Milach u.a. beteiligt sind. Es ist das jüngste Projekt von Sputnik, das schon einige interessante Bücher herausgegeben hat (Anm. des Autors: Der Band ist über die AnzenbergerGallery zu beziehen).

more:  
cac.lt
sputnikinbelarus.blogspot.de

buy: photoeye.com