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Denis Tarasov / Fyodor Telkov The Other Side of the Wall |
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For three
years, Yekaterinburg photographers Denis Tarasov and Fyodor Telkov studied the
world of ‘the zone’, closed to the eyes of strangers. They took photographs of
awful criminals who were convicted for life and regular people who made a
mistake once in their life. Their research included visits to adolescent and
women’s colonies; they worked in museums and archives with real case materials
of the most famous crimes of the past and recorded interviews with the released
prisoners. They ended up producing a story about crime and punishment, freedom
and nonconformism, the nature of evil that has no time frame and lies in the
soul of a person. |
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It turns out that freedom does not have absolute value for every person. The colony allows prisoners to finish their education, obtain a profession, which increases their chances for social rehabilitation. Many prefer the predictable schedule at the colony to the frightening uncertainty on the other side of the wall, and the prisoners refer to the colony as to the good school of life, and even as a home. “Humans are creatures that get used to everything, and I think that would best define them,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, who had his own experience of penal servitude. Such revelations makes you look differently not as much at prison, but at society in general. It is only an illusion that the world on the other side of the wall is fenced with barbed wire. In reality, it is part of the society, its borders are penetrable. The history of humanity is a history of crime. Murderers and their victims are all somebody’s children, friends, colleagues, they study in the same schools and walk the same streets, live in the same houses. Nobody can ever feel that they are safe, because evil and vice are in human nature. |
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The objects below are part of the exposition at the museum of the pretrial detention center SIZO-1 in Yekaterinburg. The museum is on the territory of the institution, so the exhibits are there only for the employees and special guests to see. One of the oldest buildings of the prison started to be built in 1928 and is a monument of architecture. There are currently about 400 cells in SIZO-1, inhabited by about several thousand people. At the same time, the institution works as a transfer prison, one of the largest in Russia. Before the death penalty was abolished, executions were served here, too. Along with adults, adolescent prisoners are also held here. Maintenance staff here are general regime prisoners. In the colony, people become units, their individuality is erased. It is almost impossible to have a frank conversation there. To find out more about life in the colony, photographers had to meet the people who got out and adapted to their new lives. To find heroes, they asked New Life, the regional civic foundation of Sverdlovsk oblast that helps convicts and released prisoners. It was started by women who have prison experience. |
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Fyodor
Telkov. Born in Nizhny Tagil, lives in Yekaterinburg. Member of the Russian Denis
Tarasov. Born in |
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Центр фотографии "Март". Екатеринбург. 8 Марта, 1 Время работы: 11.00 - 22.00 без выходных. Цена билета |
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