A publication BY BERGGER ÉDITIONS
Just pie in the sky
Igor Mukhin
Igor Mukhin
The Yeltsin Years
1991 - 1999
1991 - 1999
"Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky."
Quote by Boris Yeltsin, 1989
Quote by Boris Yeltsin, 1989
90's in Russia. The Soviet dream is over. Igor Mukhin is 30 years old, born in Moscow in 1961, he never left his hometown. In an turbulent, unstable and uncertain background, Mukhin explores Moscow like the cat Behemoth. He is very tall, and nobody notice him. He doesn't travel, he's at home and he photographs his life.
This project started looking the archives of Igor Mukhin. We discovered a lot of incredible unpublished pictures thanks to the prints, the contact sheets... A fantastic testimony about the changes in Russia in the 90's, after the collapse of the USSR.
The Soviet dream is dead. Boris Yeltsin, pursuer of democracy turned President of the Russian Federation, waves to passers-by in cardboard cut-out form. Gorbachev is already long forgotten. A bronze statue of Stalin which has been toppled from its plinth lies decaying on a lawn. Muzeon Park has become a graveyard for statues and the ghosts of those whose star has waned. This is Moscow post-glasnost and the perestroika reforms. Moscow from 1991 onwards, just after the beginning of the end.
The city is somewhat stunned by the chaos and by these strange new bedfellows – the crumbling remnants of Soviet economics and market forces. Collective and individual destinies rub shoulders. Two sirens – communism and global capitalism – still watch each other intently.
Extract from the preface by Bastien Manac'h from Polka
The city is somewhat stunned by the chaos and by these strange new bedfellows – the crumbling remnants of Soviet economics and market forces. Collective and individual destinies rub shoulders. Two sirens – communism and global capitalism – still watch each other intently.
Extract from the preface by Bastien Manac'h from Polka
Zine
60 pages
42 photographs including 27 unpublished
20x25 cm
Paperback
ISBN: 978-2-9555912-3-9
Release : October 2017
Order online "Just pie in the sky"
60 pages
42 photographs including 27 unpublished
20x25 cm
Paperback
ISBN: 978-2-9555912-3-9
Release : October 2017
Order online "Just pie in the sky"
Igor Mukhin (born in 1961) lives and works in Moscow. He is a photographer and teaches a workshop at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. During the Perestroika and glasnost period he did an independent photo project dedicated to Soviet young and rock musicians. Since the 90's he shoots the streets of Moscow and describes the changes in the Russian capital, from the fall of the USSR to the rise of the new Russia. He is also the author of many portraits of Russians artists and personalities. His pictures are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Аrt (New York), the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Multimedia Аrt Museum (Moscow), Fonds National d'Аrt Contemporian (France), the Corcoran Gallery of Аrt (Washington).
Igor Mukhin
