IT WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE
Marylise Vigneau
Marylise Vigneau
IT WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE Marylise
Vigneau
IT WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE
Text by Marylise VigneauThirty years ago, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. This final act of a long dissolution was one of the most pivotal moments of the 20th century: the Soviet Union was dead at 69. A world that wanted to be eternal and universal had disintegrated. It left some im pressive ruins and many conflicts and difficulties.
In his farewell address, Gorbatchow said, "the old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working." And indeed, despite the brief jubilation of freedom, the ye ars to come would be brutal in the 15 independent republics broken out of the former USSR.Central Asia and the Caucasus, more recently Ukraine, would experience ethnic or territorial wars. Industries would be decimated, the most brutal capitalism would turn many people's lives upside down and the ideology in force for so many decades be disowned.
Diverse and interwoven stories form a fragmented and subjective portrait of a space, both geographical and mental. It does not deny the crimes and predations of a corrupt and totalitarian system. But it aims to counter the oblivion of what was, sometimes, furtively and imperfectly, an attempt to build a utopia. It speaks of metamorphoses when past and present merge in a strange yet indecipherable way. When two lovers gambol among the wrecks of the Aral Sea or when a young woman massages the bust of Marx aban doned in a corridor. These images are a tribute to hopes, disillusions and the people who lived through them. It might also be a farewell, a way of looking back before entering an uncertain post-post-Soviet era.
Imprint All photographs and text © by Marylise Vigneau Layout by Wolfgang Zurborn Editing Challenge of German Photographic Academy November 2022