2000-2001, Kolomna Kids: A Generation

Лучше один раз увидеть, чем сто раз услышать. Russian proverb.
-- Better to see once, than hear 100 times.
Twenty years makes a generation.
Buried deep into the nesting dolls of my work is this body of snapshots produced by about 70 "Kolomna Kids" in 2000 and 2001. Their matryoshka-like
golds and reds, greens and blues came from the assignment to "Photograph what is important to you."
Kolomna in 2000 was an urban working-class and arts-filled region in central St. Petersburg. With a Community Award from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, guided by Patricia Cummings, I invested some of the budget into workshops at 5 clubs and 1 orphanage.
The Kolomna Kids ranged in ages from 6 to 16. Their pictures show a time and aesthetic fading away: from the Soviet-era kitchens and wallpapers to the cameras and film they used to record their world.
I think the pictures affirm the how and why friends, family, arts and creativity, play, school, pets, and our environment form and colour life's passions and pursuits for growing kids everywhere.
The Kolomna Kids took the mechanical, manual-wind film cameras provided and made images that, to me, are anything but mechanical.
A generation has come and gone from these Kolomna streets and clubs. Some participants in this project surely have kids of their own.
"Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art." -- Susan Sontag