Documentary photographers Jason Eskenazi (American) and Valeri Nistratov (Russian) took to the road in Russia to shoot 4 x 5 colour portraits in various cities and across different levels of Russian society. It was their first time shooting large format so they created a method to shoot each portrait under the same conditions (lighting, distance, pose). Only the locations changed: factory, street, train station, hospital, prison, post-office, sanatorium, etc. They travelled to more than 10 cities & towns, including: Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Krasnoyarsk and Moscow. A white sheet was used in the background for continuity purposes. During the session they documented the subjects name, profession, date of birth, and where the photo was taken. Usually only one portrait was taken for each subject and the process took less than one minute. The two short films included by Abigail Spindle show the photographers at the beginning of the project and near its end. Audio interviews were also recorded where and when possible to let the subjects speak for themselves. No attempt was made to represent all ethnic nationalities, in this series especially from the former Soviet Union, living on Russian territory but instead they concentrated on more or less pure Russians who make up the majority of the population and are thus referred to scientifically as the Title Nation. Jason Eskenazi was born New York and still lives there. He first travelled to Russia in 1991 before the coup that led to the fall of the Soviet Union. In the years that followed he received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant, 1996; the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1999, for his work in Russia and the former Soviet Union, culminating in the book Wonderland A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith (POYis Best Photography Book 2008; Its unusually small for a book of photographs the size of a paperback novel and, like a good novel, its a page-turner. The New Yorker.) In 2004 he received a Fulbright Scholarship that made the project Title Nation possible. Valery Nistratov was born in 1973 in Moscow, Russia. He has been interested in photography since childhood. In 1990, he became a professional photographer when he took up a job as a press photographer for a local newspaper, Za Kommunizm. In late 1993, Nistratov redefined his approach to photography, rejecting news photography in favour of socio-documental photography. He considers everyday social life in society as the principal subject of his photographs, as well as the interaction between man and the environment. In the course of his work on his personal projects Nistratov travelled widely in Russia, the former USSR republics, China and Afghanistan. Mr Nistratovs work has been presented at exhibitions in Russia, France, the US, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Mexico, South Africa, Japan and China. His photographs were published in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Dia Siete, NZZ, WOZ, Le Monde Diplamatic and OjoDePez. In 2004, Nistratov, together with a Swiss journalist Judith Huber, published the book Risse im Patriarchat Frauen in Afghanistan depicting the condition of women in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. He is also the author of Lesostep (literally, forest-steppe), published in 2008.
