Soviets

This unparalleled collection of photographs documents the years surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through the camera lens Shepard Sherbell tells a story that language alone cannot. He captures in more than 200 black-and-white images the previously unseen reality of everyday life in the fifteen former Soviet republics. In these photographs - sometimes humorous, amazing, or troubling, but always enthralling - Sherbell offers an unprecedented view of people caught in the crucial moment of transition between communism and capitalism, repression and freedom, security and anarchy. On assignment for the German weekly Der Spiegel, Sherbell traveled throughout the dismantled Soviet Union from 1990 to 1993 with more freedom than a citizen could have achieved. Unrestricted in his access to subject matter, he recorded the faces and lives of those who inhabit what was once a superpower. Mothers, mine workers, prisoners, farmers, housewives, children, Sherbell shows us without sentimentality how life looked for a people whose awe-inspiring capacity to survive has been, and continues to be, tested. Serge Schmemann provides a general retrospective and moving introduction to the book.