Moscow Diary / Personal Project

I first arrived in Moscow winter 2003. I stayed in the city for two weeks and later in summer 2004 I spend two months more. My all idea was to photograph daily life, people of the new generation in the streets. After this trip, I decided to go back to Moscow to see more ground level street life and city people. After all those years under a communist regime and the biggest ideological war against the capitalist world; I found a tired nation on the streets of the capital city. A change was still a big wave on the culture and people. Middle-aged generation is trying to keep what they saved after perestroika. Elders just left with their idea of communism, the nostalgia of the glory days. The monthly pension of a retired worker is around 10-15 dollars. Young people try to get a job in some international companies. Most popular University Departments are political sciences, economy, and mathematics. Recently foreign languages such as Chinese took importance, because of the foreign policy of Russia. A big city is the witness of many other aspects of social injustice every day. The number of unemployed young people raising for the last ten years. Banks are giving small amounts of credits to new investors to build a whole new company. But money has to be paid back in a year. So none of the small investors can not take that risk for a year. That’s one of the reasons that foreign investment needed. However, all those matters look chaotic there is still something to hold on, the intellectual spirit of communism.