Winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2018
Eclipse Time
Kaliningrad region - a Russian "Far West", but, like the Far East, of interest for documentary photography, not only as "disputed territories of modern Russia" in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, but, above all, as a platform for observing the way of life of people with stories of being torn from their roots and placed in a foreign environment or as a visual exploration of mutual infidelity. Jury statement: However one only sees the ones in the light, not in the dark. Boris Register also sees the ones in the dark. Those who live far away from Moscow. Untouched by what is decided upon there. Are they at peace with their lives? They have no choice. Do they have fun? They try. Boris Register, born in 1963 in Tashkent, in the Uzbek Soviet Republic, is one of the Russian documentary photographers who work with silence. With the raw poetry of daily life. The life which does not bear anything sensational. And nothing pompous. He is with the people who are generally called the ‘ordinary people’. He respects the inconspicuousness of the people living at the periphery. The Russian Far West: Kaliningrad. Once a fought over territory, war zone, desaster zone, a place from which people were driven away and which was conquered. Now periphery, but still laden with history. And now: a small village, playing ground, sanctuary for old people. The peace of the province. The peace on the track along the fields leading into the woods.
Photos by Boris Register
Kaliningrad region - a Russian "Far West", but, like the Far East, of interest for documentary photography, not only as "disputed territories of modern Russia" in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, but, above all, as a platform for observing the way of life of people with stories of being torn from their roots and placed in a foreign environment or as a visual exploration of mutual infidelity. Jury statement: However one only sees the ones in the light, not in the dark. Boris Register also sees the ones in the dark. Those who live far away from Moscow. Untouched by what is decided upon there. Are they at peace with their lives? They have no choice. Do they have fun? They try. Boris Register, born in 1963 in Tashkent, in the Uzbek Soviet Republic, is one of the Russian documentary photographers who work with silence. With the raw poetry of daily life. The life which does not bear anything sensational. And nothing pompous. He is with the people who are generally called the ‘ordinary people’. He respects the inconspicuousness of the people living at the periphery. The Russian Far West: Kaliningrad. Once a fought over territory, war zone, desaster zone, a place from which people were driven away and which was conquered. Now periphery, but still laden with history. And now: a small village, playing ground, sanctuary for old people. The peace of the province. The peace on the track along the fields leading into the woods.
Photos by Boris Register
