I should just send a link to this annual photography contest every single time someone asks me, “So why live and work in Russia?” (And I’m not even a photographer)
Here’s my top five from among this year’s winners, incidentally:
“Forest” by Sergei Kosolapov, one of the winners in the Nature category. This was taken in Cheboksary (my husband worked there as an actor once):
“Through the looking-glass” by Mikhail Grebenshchikov, taken in Moscow, during the ill-fated May 6 rally earlier this year:
“The police” by Dmitry Zakharov, a picture from a rally for fair elections earlier this year in Moscow:
“The Milky Way” by Yulia Dmitriyeva, a photo of Elektrozavodskaya metro station in Moscow:
“New way in” by Marina Dubeiko, taken in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar region:
These pictures are my own antidote to today’s horrors in the State Duma (voting to ban adoptions of Russian children by Americans, which is seen by them as an “adequate response” to banning officials allegedly involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s death from the U.S.).
Natalia A. 