St. Petersburg, Russia
Tag: russia
Restored kokoshnik of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna
Hyperborea series, 2011
#21, Saint Petersburg, Russia
20 x 26.75 inches (50.8 x 68 cm)
archival inkjet print
I memorize the Russian tsars by announcing each of them in a wrestling commentator voice in my head
“And from 1825 to 1855 we have NICHOLAS "NICK THE STICK” ROMANOV!!! It’s 1825 and it looks like he’s really cracking down on those Decembrists, Marx is introducing communism in 1848 BUT NICK IS HAVING NONE OF THAT! Will he survive the Crimean War?? THE ANSWER IS NO!!!“
"Who’s taking over but none other than ALEXANDER "SERF LIBERATOR” ROMANOV!! Comparably so liberal!! I hope he doesn’t get assassinated by the People’s Will in 1881!!!“
"Oh damn, looks like we’re going CONSERVATIVE AS FUCK with Tsar Alexander III!! Land captains and the Manifesto of Unshakable Autocracy? OF COURSE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE EARLY MOTHERFUCKER! 1894!!”
“Let’s see, who do we have here…. little Nicholas II. Clearly you don’t know what the hell you’re doing since you got your industrially backwards country into the Russo Japanese War in 1905 and halfheartedly created a Duma in response to your BRUTAL CRACKDOWN on protesters! Bloody Sunday was a shit show, thanks a lot for World War One, YOUR WEAKNESSES WILL GET YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY KILLED by 1918!”
“Using the perpetual dusk of Russia’s far North, Roberts encapsulates the natural light that was available for only a few hours each day during Polyarnye Nochi (Polar Nights), the period from December until mid-January when the sun remains below the horizon. Like Motherland before it, Polyarnye Nochi is a testament to modern Russian life and can almost be viewed as a ‘road movie’. His images allude to the half-light between the reality of subject and the surreal quality of image. Often he balances the dream-like property of subject matter with the use of a long exposure to render as much detail in the photograph as possible”.
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