Holy Rus
Some thirty years after the collapse of communism, Vladislav Semenov portrays the bittersweet reality of a post-Soviet world steeped in contradictions — a landscape oscillating between hypermodernity and folk tradition, opulence and destitution, kitsch and classicism, faith and consumerism.
The book brings together film photographs captured across Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine.
With irony, yet never without empathy, the photographer exposes the paradoxes and the often tragicomic absurdity of everyday life: revelers and pensioners, patriots and tourists, the devout and the destitute — all united in the fragile theatre of the ordinary.
What began as a travelogue gradually transforms into a personal diary, tracing both a physical and inner journey through the artist’s native lands — an attempt to weave back together the scattered threads of his origins.
2022
Self-edited
Design by Julian Zimmermann
Preface by Emilie Delcambre Hirsch
Translation by Gail Wagman, Elena Timofeeva and Artem Saydumarov
500 copies
ISBN 978-2-8399-2968-4
