Photo: Gosha Bergal
Photographer, model, and author, with a past that didn’t immediately suggest such a career. A portrait of Gosha Bergal (Гоша Бергал) on Zen Yandex, and more recently in Paws for thought: a heartwarming photo diary about a rescue dog and his owner (The Calvert Journal, 2020). About how a knee injury and a dog led to new paths.
Salarjevo
Саларьево (Salarjevo) is (besides being a metro station in Moscow) a photo project by Bergal. You can view it on Issuu (2020) – definitely worth checking out. More photos on Mdfschool.ru (2019).
Reportage
Bergal also ventures into current affairs. Photography of the 2019 protests can be seen in this Репортаж из центра Москвы, объятого протестами (Snob/Сноб, 2019), and also in Kremlin Revolt: The Russian Youth Brings Their Frustration to The Streets (Indie Magazine, 2017).
Portrait 2017
Фотограф Гоша Бергал о жизни в 90-х, современных проблемах и работе моделью: Photographer Gosha Bergal on life in the 90s, modern problems, and working as a model (null, 2017, 3 m).
Also featured in Как русские гопники «отжали» мировой подиум (TV Rain/Телеканал Дождь, 2017, 7 m), within the first minute and a half, and again briefly from 5:20.
Music
For many, the first encounter with Bergal came through this video clip from АИГЕЛ: Татарин (Tatarin) (2017). A remix and new video were recently released (2020).
Interview
Bergal speaks in the first 27 minutes of Диалоги и фотография (Kostya Tishshe, 2018, 85 m).
Read more at Создатели районного блога об окрестностях «Курской» Наташа Рубина и Гоша Бергал (Moskvichmag, 2019) and «Надо, ребята, чтобы я сначала протрезвел» (Moslenta, 2018).
Also check out How did photographers live on quarantine? (Foto Slovo, 2020) and «Какой-то гопник и хипстерша» (Noftr.ru).
See also Shoot the Story (Grade Moscow), Sami valite – a picturesque protest by the activist brand Kultrab (Strand Magazine), and even if you don’t read Spanish, take a look at Gosha Bergal: “La fotografía revela la imagen general del orden mundial” (JOIA Magazine).
Pulp Fiction
Bergal as гангстер (gangster): 20 seconds of Tarantino in the woods (2014).
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Country
The Netherlands holds a unique place in the Russian imagination. This is how our country, and we, are viewed through Russian eyes.
An interview becomes legendary when it gets its own page on
Wikipedia. On February 6, 2024, Tucker Carlson spoke with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. The report (127 minutes) offers a good, or at least broad, opportunity to hear the Russian perspective on the war against Ukraine.
What we would call ’tokkies’ or ‘gabbers’, and what elsewhere might be referred to as white trash or hooligans – in Russia, these are called gopniki. Folk culture in a tracksuit.
Since the age of sixteen, Игорь Мухин (1961) has been taking photographs. Armed with a
Смена-8М camera, he started his journey. So, when he found himself among artists and musicians in the 1980s, he already had a trained eye – and a better camera. Mukhin (sometimes Moukhin) witnessed major changes and began documenting them.
Freedom of speech is decreasing everywhere, though the reasons vary by region. Meanwhile, Big Tech’s power is growing, along with its interference. In this new era, a nearly forgotten Soviet answer is reemerging: samizdat, the underground DIY press and distribution network.
Every country has a flag and a coat of arms. The Netherlands has a lion, France has a rooster, New Zealand has a kiwi, and the United States has a bald eagle. In Russia, it’s an eagle with two heads and three crowns, and a man on a horse who has just killed a dragon with a spear.
