From Rafał Milach's "7 Rooms", courtesy of Zachęta
Milach's photography series goes into the lives and homes of today's thirty-somethings in Russia, creating a visual narrative of everyday life under Vladmir Putin
7 Rooms is composed of six stories from all over the Soviet Union, portraits of people the photographer has come to know as friends over the past several years. Milach explains how these relationships evolved and made their way into film, saying "I have been through three phases in my relationships with my heroes. First, they were my guides through their cities, then they became the heroes of my photos, and then finally they became friends with whom I talk more than I photograph".
There is no sensationalism in the photographs, rather images of the everyday life of people like Gala fromYekaterinburg, who emigrated with her family to France, Stas, a journalist and a "real Siberian bear" who lives in Krasnoyarsk with his family, but travels a great deal, writing texts for election campaigns and Vasya, who is from a village near to Yekaterinburg and well-known on the local drag queen scene under his alias Panikchida.
The seventh room of the title is dedicated to the reportage of Svetlana Alexievich, author of War's Unwomanly Face, a book on the personal stories of women fighting during World War II in the Ukraine. Fragments from Alexievich's book Enchanted with Death, which also tells the stories of people and their experiences after the fall of the Soviet Union. Both projects refer to "the metaphorical baggage of the generation born in the USSR". Each photograph is accompanied by a insightful quote from each subject on their lives and habits, tracing the evolution of a new Russian mentality as the nation moves on from the Soviet era onto the anxiety of today's Russia under Putin. "They were born in the U.S.S.R., grew up in the transition time of Perestroika, and started their adult life in Putin's Russia," says Milach. The entrance to the exhibition is a multimedia installation showing each of the characters in their surroundings: at home, at work, on their housing estate or in the city. The images show spaces that are both dismal and pleasant, reaching beyond stereotypes of poverty and kitsch to show a nation torn between the traditions of the past and the consumerism of the present.
On completing the project, Rafał Milach said, "In Russia, there are a huge number of paradoxes. Sometimes it seemed to me that I understood some of them, only to find that my next trip proved that I was mistaken". He has also said "The more I tried to understand Russia, the more lost I became. Russia is like a planet of its own."
Rafał Milach (born 1978 in Gliwice) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2003 and the Institute of Creative Photography (ITF) in Opava, Czech Republic. In 2004, he was invited by the Parisian photo agency VII to take part in the Altemus training program for photojournalists from Eastern and Central Europe. In 2006 together with 10 other Central Eastern European photographers, Rafal created a photo collective Sputnik Photos to document, promote and spread knowledge on transition issues in CEE countries. His works have been exhibited in Poland, Finland, Spain, Japan, China, the USA, and the Ukraine. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Photography Book Now - Grand Prize in New York, the Grand Press Photo Prize in Poland, the World Press Photo Prize in the Netherlands, the BZ WBK Press Photo Prize in Poland, and the Guardian Weekend Photography Prize in Great Britain. Today he lives and works in Warsaw.
C/O Berlin presents 58 images from 7 Rooms between the 25th of May - 22nd of July 2012. It is the first time the images have been shown in Germany. Previously the series was shown at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw and published as an album available for sale via Milach's website. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition the exhibition in Berlin, illustrated with texts by Svietlana Alexievich and published by Kehrer Verlag. Rafał Milach's photographs are also featured in Stand By, an album of images taken by various young photographers in Belarus, published by Sputnik Photos.
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Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: C/O Gallery, Zachęta National Gallery