A people's friendship

Most of my work focuses on the relation between institutionalized power and individuals, and in the last decade I found in Russia and former Soviet Country the fertile ground for my investigation. While covering the uprising in Ukraine, and then the civil war and the occupation of Crimea, I was disturbed by how hard it was to remain neutral when there was so much press attention. I felt like whatever I did was going to be used for propaganda, and I thought about doing something somehow connected to this story but far away from the press attention. In the summer of 2014 I decided to explore the border between Russia and China.

Over the past two centuries, there have been periodic tensions between Russia and China, including some serious border conflicts, and historically Russia has usually held the upper hand but now the dynamics have changed. In a remote place like this, where the border, over 4000km and one of the longest border in the world, lies about 6,000km from Moscow and 2,000km from Beijing.

Chinese and Russians lives so far from the central power, that I was very curious to see their daily lives. I discovered different cultures mixing together surviving despite the decisions made by their governments far away. And what I was most interested in.

The portfolio I’m presenting here is an example of the work I’m doing in this region combining formal portrait with documentary pictures, audio and video footage.