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Categories / Human Interest /Tags / Asia / Belarus / Cityscapes / daily life / documentary photography / street photography / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 1 Comment

One Response to “I travelled with Mikhail, my Belarusan companion”

1. Thomas, on February 15th, 2010 at 4:12 pm Said:

   Just had a look to other pictures of Belarus and the difference is quite amazing. The different point of views of the photographers are quite striking.
   Mitchell Kanashkevich is the other photographer: http://mitchellktravelphoto.wordpress.com/

In August 2009 I travelled with Mikhail, my Belarusan companion, throughout the country as a participant to Plotki magazine’s Belarus Inside Out project. Ten days of restless movement in and between four major cities, Grodna, Bobruisk, Mogilev and Minsk, seeking to satisfy my urge to document life as-it-is in this isolated, flat-terrained but otherwise stranger-friendly place.

Belarus was total alien territory to me before, rumored to be a cold, hostile place, the “last dictatorship in Europe” to quote Condoleeza Rice. My preparations included learning how to say “excuse me” and “thank you” in Russian, ways to face cold-blooded KGB officers interrogating me about the reasons of my visit and memorizing the phone number of the Greek department of foreign affairs (in absence of a Greek embassy within the country). To my surprise, all these proved to be completely useless. Well, all except for “извините” and “Спасибо”! It’s not that the country is not run by an ego-maniac, not-so-democratically-elected and unpopular president, but this apparently didn’t have much effect on my going around freely with my camera in hand. My sole interaction with the state was at the airport visa control and when I shot a couple of frames on some police officers (!) in the Minsk metro, only for me to receive a polite “it is forbidden to photograph here, sir” in Russian. I was warmly welcomed by virtually every person I met and felt almost at home with all the -overwhelming at times- hospitality.

Dignity is a virtue Belarusans certainly have on an individual level, which makes a strong contrast with their collective passivity towards politics and the public sphere in its whole. The outlook for “socialism” some would argue, “state capitalism” I hear someone yelling at the back. In any case, by general confession most Belarusans are satisfied living in countless clusters of apartment blocks, so-called “sleeping areas” with very little or absent infrastructure save for five-lane streets on the empty lanes of which only a few cars and private minibuses serving as public transports move spaciously. The scale is definitely inhumane and individuality is suppressed to the benefit of socialistic urban planning.