Pictures of a Transition
by Veronika R. Hahn
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
| E Magazine, Athens,
Greece, Oct. 1999 |
||
Where does your interest in Eastern-Central Europe come from?
I was born in the United States in 1956, one of the defining years of the cold war, the year of Khrushchevis famous speech denouncing Stalin's crimes, the year of the Suez Crisis, and the Hungarian revolution. I was educated to believe that the "Evil Empire", the Soviet Union, intended to destroy my country's way of life and abolish its personal freedoms. I know that meanwhile on the other side of the world Soviet children were schooled to believe that the United States sought to corrupt their souls with the selfish ideology of capitalism. So when in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and with it the Iron Curtain, I, in my thirties, spurred by natural curiosity decided to visit the Eastern European countries that had previously been out of my reach.
Were you originally planning a long term "relationship" or is it due to the nature of transition that you've ended up to devote ten years of your life to Eastern-Central Europe?
In the beginning it was sheer curiosity, the wish to follow the events. Then a passion arose and the euphoria, which was experienced all over the world led me from country to country in the region. I wanted to grasp the way the changes affected people's lives. It was in 1992 that I first understood that if I wanted to create something lasting and valuable, I have to spend at least ten years in the region to create a structure of events and developments. I have visited almost all of the the countries of Eastern Europe and most of the countries of the former Soviet Union spending quite a lot of time particular in Moscow where I had my own apartment for six years. I was lucky to have TIME magazines support.
The fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the socialist system is usually described in a favourable light. Your photos however are far from bright or optimistic.
Perhaps Hungary is in the luckiest and most advanced countries in transition. This does not mean that its people have not met with difficult circimstances. In Ozd for example, the steel town has been hit hard by unemployment. I have met many desperate people there, including the gypsies you see in my photos. With my images I hope to point out the enormous differences between the countries of the region and between the individual layers of a given society. In Moscow my photographs of the casino goers for example and Nina Ricci-shoppers are played against the ever growing problem of impoverished pensioners and the unemployed struggling for survival. While all the countries in this region started off from approximately the same position in 1989, now three Central European countries are new NATO-members. They are light-years ahead of Serbia and Kosovo, which have been bombed by NATO. In some cases the closer a country is geographically to the European Union, the more favourable its situation may be. Russia on the other hand, and especially the states farther to the East, present a very dismal picture. In many respects I blame the West for not providing greater assistance and for not setting an example. Especially in Russia where the West did not help shape the financial and legal framework of the transition. One thing that is evident in the photographs is the lack of social netting for the old and the poor. It is a massive problem in the region. Through my images I am hope to commmunicate many of these problems to the West.
The Transition In Four Different Blacks
by Peter B. Sos
An American photographer, Anthony Suau traversed the countries of the former Soviet bloc from 1989 through 1999 and documented the story of transition from socialism to capitalism. The exhibition entitled Beyond the Fall opened last Friday in the Budapest Museum of Ethnography, side by side with the World Press Photo and the Hungarian Press Photo exhibitions -- and has since attracted ample attention. Saturday morning in a meeting organized by Independent Media Center the Time magazine photographer talked about his experiences, and details of his ten year monumental venture. A selection of the Hungarian photographers attended the meeting listening to their colleague’s account with much interest. The Hungarian profession agreed that the exhibition, documenting the transition of the region, is indeed outstanding. Their presence and interest was a tribute of recognition paid to Suau, one of the ten best photographers of the world.
Suau, born in 1956, shared the familiar American, Cold War era prejudices on the Eastern bloc until 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, and the year he first arrived to work in Berlin. It was the same year that idea of the “great project” was conceived and he decided to return to the region repeatedly to record the changes. It is not only his photos -- his words also painted a rather grim picture of the past ten years of the region. The sum of his impressions is unfortunately nothing new to us living here: the overwhelming majority of Eastern inhabitants are living in worse material conditions, and success stories are isolated. It is only a small group of people who have come out on top. Suau believes Hungary is the country which has fared most successfully through the transition. The Hungarian part of the collection includes dramatic photos which show the tearing down of the Ozd steel factory and a photo taken at the Lenin Bar in Sajolevezd which the caption mistakenly calls “Lenin Bar in Ozd”-- the only thing the nearby town has to do with the bar is that this is where the policemen came from to remove the symbols of oppression “prohibited by law” on display there.
Suau painted the situation in the ex-Soviet Union in the darkest colors: the total absence of a social system, and the extreme defenselessness of the poor and the old. At the same time he is one of the few foreign photographers who has won admittance to the circles of the Russian nouveau riche. Because of his acquaintances he was able to work among them as a Fortune magazine photographer which is a magazine also known in Russian elite circles. The photos were, somehow or other, never published in that magazine.
Due to the interpreter the notion of the Russian nouveau riche, banditism and gangsters seemed a bit tangled and mixed up, but as it turned out, this is one of the traits of the system. The photographer, admitted to the circles of the nouveau riche, could follow with his camera, the way millions of dollars of “black” cash, guarded by private armies, were changing hands. And in the end he nearly took for granted that -- in the western sense of the word at least -- you cannot escape becoming a criminal if you want to get rich, or want to run a successful business. Laws in Russia are unable to cope with the situation, the black economy is inseparable from legitimate business activity.
The American photographer also found that, in the beginning, people in the region were from an entirely different character than those he had encountered in the West. Instead of consumption and money.. human relationships, friendship, education and cultural roots guided their lives. Later on, in the past couple of years, Suau gradually realized that people in Eastern Europe were also being guided by the omnipotence of money and by the possession of consumer goods.
In the course of his work Suau also had to keep an eye on the interest of the big Western magazines editors in order to realize and finance the massive collection. His dream could come about according to his intents only if the work gave an authentic picture of the troublesome transition for generations to come. Prior to Budapest, the exhibition and album, had been presented with great success in his home country in both New York and Washington DC. Heads of foreign affairs were among those personally interested in the photographer’s experiences. It has also presented in Berlin, Milan and Moscow. Small wonder that the Russian aspects, constituting the gravest part of the collection, caused an uproar there, claiming that the photographer painted a negative picture of the country. Suau however believes that Moscow is an island where life is entirely different from that of their fellow countrymen in the distant parts of the former empire.
As for the technical realization and durability of the black and white photographs, the only thing Suau disclosed was that he printed them using a special, four black inks set, not yet commercially available. According to ILFORD, the producer, the inks are archival for more than hundred and fifty years.