I recently saw an exhibit at the DePaul Art Museum called The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus. It was surprising and informative — prior to seeing the exhibit, I knew that there was conflict in the area around Sochi, and that it was fairly economically depressed, but I didn’t know much more than that.
The aesthetic of the exhibit was this sort of post apocalyptic realist look. It featured a lot of pictures like the one above, of abandoned buildings, or pictures of people in beat-up rooms, staring down the camera. It felt, in many ways, like it was doing more to make a political point than be art.
I think that’s fine. I think that’s a good thing, and I think it’s much more interesting as a political activist project than it would be as something that is simply a series of photographs. It’s journalism, journalism with a long timeline and a fairly uncertain outcome. Since 2007, Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen have been working on this, documenting people and places around Sochi.
As a person who is interested in journalism, this kind of project amazes me. It would take so much dedication, and such a strong drive to tell these stories. It’s admirable. It’s amazing.
Most of the exhibit feels like it’s based off of this book, or that the book is closely based off of the exhibit. I’m not sure which came first, or how it was all planned out, but I would be interested in finding that out. It feels like it’s still in progress, like they’re going to go back in a few months and take pictures of all the Olympic venues now that they’re empty. I don’t even know how a project like that wraps up. Do you just stop taking pictures? Do you stop caring? Do you move on to something else?
If you’ve ever done this kind of a project, I’d really love to hear about it in the comments – what was it like? What did you take away from it?