Newseum
February 11- June 3, 2000
I remember the tanks, I remember the bombed buildings, I remember the fear and hiding. I see 1956, the revolution in Hungary through your pictures. Thank you for showing others reality of the world afar - thank you for seeing horror and pain in a panterly way! The photographs portray a Europe most of us are not familiar with. Vivid! Well done.
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Makes me understand what I failed to see while it was happening.
AMAZING! It’s all here. Distilled. Everything. Straight
to the heart.
-Robert Stevens, TIME Magazine
Current History recorded forever.
I’ve been completely overwhelmed by this collection of work. Every image is a masterpiece, literally, which is so rare in photography exhibits. The subject mater, and its intrinsic importance, almost make you forget the artistic compositions, but not quite.
Disturbing and necessary.
I agree.
Sometimes only pictures can say it.
Reminiscent of Capa’s finest. An outstanding collection.
Thank you for the care and attention to the quality in the work, the presentation and the written narratives and reports. This is really important work, and information and I only with it could be more widely promoted and publicized. May good things come of it.
I knew intellectually -- now I feel.
Thank you for the poem.
Speechless.
Extremely moving and depressing. The deception of the masses by promises of free markets, goods, and consumerism is perpetuated by leaders and carried out by their USA corporate agents i.e. McDonalds. I would like these US corporate leaders to see their insidious tactics (i.e. new McDonalds cornering a housing project) has not advanced the democracy and choice, but rather fueled unrest and dissatisfaction as the gulf between the haves and have-nots expands. These photos should be required viewing - for all.
Newspaper photos of what is going on in Russia give you no idea of what life has been like there since the fall of communism. Suau’s photos do and do it well.
Emotionally draining.
Anthony Suau’s depiction and photographic capture was superb and should be acclaimed all over the world to see. “Very fascinating, touching and moving.”
A very necessary exhibit for all Americans. More is essential!
This is one of the best exhibitions I have ever seen! You’ve created the impression that there is no camera between us and “them”. Thank you.
Unfathomable.
What is the miracle box--?
Why did the media focus on the fables of President Clinton instead of showing Americans the life and death struggles of the east?
The exhibition itself is like the fallen bloc: irregular borders, immense scale, horror in every direction. I stand still at any location and feel pulled into a land of no escape. How can I do my part to save the world?
Why do you go east to show the poverty and the misery to the west?
I am here with a high school friend form Holland - now we are 46 or so. We just came form the Warner Brothers Pavilion, corporate hell of commercialism. Of course IBM is not a sacred space either. But with this exhibit you have brought us again into contact with real life in its horrors - the lost potential for beauty - and an occasional vision of Paradise - nearly lost.
This is a very impressive exhibition!!!!!
- (Hungarian Museum of Photography)
There is this woman I know who left Romania 10 years ago, at the age of 50, with her husband -- to start a new life in the U.S. The sadness in her eyes is undeniable. At the same time, she is filled with joy to be living and working in Houston, TX. Thank you for letting me see her world. An unbelievable exhibit.
I was deeply moved by the images. As I am the only one in the gallery it struck me...I had come form a street (5th Ave) where people were lined up to enter a new clothing store to buy, buy, buy. How little people care about what’s going on in the rest of the world.
“Serbs shell a Bosnian refugee camp” - knocked me out. The terror and anger in the woman’s eyes illustrates the feminine reaction to war better than any image I have ever seen.
A moving exhibition! Thanks! My father came here form Russia - my mother came here form Romania. Thanks, folks, for giving me a good life.
Very excellent work. Don’t weaken. Thanks for the mission and your spirit!
I also saw this exhibition in London. I can only hope that the exhibit and the commentary, is given wider publicity. Can we really just stand by and watch the growth of a new barbarism?
Thank you for providing us with such interesting and rich text and images. Congratulations! The print statement beautifully gives the intense mood to the images. I hope students use these text and images in your book in current and future history courses, photojournalism too. -ICP student
Dear Mr. Suau,
Your pictures are like an entire movie captured in just one frame. Very poignant
work!
-Santa Monica, California
I just feel very sad
-Tucson, AZ
It’s hard to wing it with all these people behind me trying to tell you what they think of your work. I’ll save you the trouble and sum it up in one word for you. GENIUS.
Fantastic work- in the Magnum tradition....something which I thought was dying... excellent photojournalism dealing with facts through human experience - a keen eye, a deep heart, and a fabulous understanding... and on the same line at the very same instant
Brilliant!!
Non, le vrai photojournalisme n’est pas mort!
Came here to New York form Michigan to “see the sights”. Your show stopped me in my tracks. Thank you for giving a damm, for your courage and tenacity. I am sniffing back the tears.. the lost photo I saw was the running horse. A beautiful last images that will stay with me for a long time. It evokes the sprit of the entire show.
All pictures, except for war-related, don’t objectively reflect all sides of life in the former Soviet Union.
Exactly what this exhibition is; take some pictures of South Bronx and some pictures of ghost towns of Nevada, and show them somewhere in Moscow. Will that create a true picture of the U.S. and New York?!?!
(next writer) Good luck on “objectively reflecting all sides of life”!
(next writer) We don’t have millions and millions of people living South-Bronx style in the US. Lots of people have a good life here. Russia’s majority lives in poverty. Sorry but the truth stinks!!!
Yeltsin walking on a bright room with a huge black hole on the left, I like it.
Fabulous -- glad you saved the text!
Your work is both haunting and funny. You seem to perfectly capture the desolation and bleak optimism of a part of the world that has been largely forgotten.
Thank you for putting these images into the world. They will survive and endure for eternity! Please continue to do wonderful work.
Amazing. What a distorted sense of reality we have here in the US!
These photographs speak so loudly!
Thank you for bringing back these images and writings -- both are illuminating.
Form one photographer to another. You are a great artist. Extremely talented and ambitious. Keep up the great work.
I thought your photograph of the man and the woman in Novorossisk in 1998 (it’s untitled and she is wearing a white dress) simply astonishing. I was born in Belarus and will be going back to Russia for the first time this summer. You have managed to both terrify and exhilarate me.
Congratulations on the success of this exhibition. You’ve created a powerful and moving testimony to a truly schizophrenic time and place, which seems emblematic of this last chapter of the 20th century.
Your pictures say it all!
Congratulations for your work, I think it very honest and perceptive. Keep working that way!
Startling! Haunting
At your opening I was impressed to just down a quick message. Now, the second viewing -- and I am still too impressed!..
I now see better through the tears! Your trust and truth are truly inspiring!
Very enlightening
“Workers of the world unite!!”
The truth God knows Best. He loves us all!
That’s right blame God. He still loves us all!
This would be an ideal show for my high school. Student of European History.
Moving, sad but inspiring work.
Excellent presentation! Layout, material..so disturbing, and it happens still.
You have moved me!
To those of us who have not had to endure these travesties of life. How lucky we are - God Bless America
One of the most beautiful works on Eastern Europe. The best complete visually and emotionally..
Glad to be in the USA! Terrible though it may be.
Eye-opening.
Very beautiful images -- should be in a museum!!
Thanks for your reminder.
What a bloody world! nothing is new in this cruel existence of life!
What a challenging display of tragedy and involvement. How excellent the coordinated graphic composition exudes displeasure. Beyond Bresson is Suau. You’ve brought us inside the inside of the other side as our being their decisive critic.
Is this a social landscape of the nineteenth century? Unfortunately
no. Are there no highlights, only shadows all desolate beings. Revolt of sadness,
exploited social commentary; the drama exuded of a lost-confused community.
How perfect these visuals, how predictably poignant. How happily sad or the
images would not have existed. Why is this society so confused, so frustrated,
so colossal. as is,
- s.a. grossberg
3/18/2000
Your work is incredibly poignant. Thank you for your work in the crimes of war: What the public should know.
Compelling imagery that makes the powerful reality of these people seem like and endless- struggle. The human struggle in a partially tragic context.
No sentimentality necessary. Thank you for the creating these important testimonies.
Your pictures are incredible. The printing is perfect. We were witness to the same time and place as many of your Russian images. I was photographing and living in Russia form 1995-1997. I saw nearly everything you captured in Russia so beautifully. You have captured the essence of the people in a place and time with a lot of artistry and sensitivity. Congratulations on a job beautifully done.
Thank you for taking the risks to produce these very important images. Americans who have never been can’t imagine the struggle for daily life there. My family is form the areas you photographed Poland - Czech - Belarus - Austria and I hope to one day return.
I’m fond of Sebastiao Salgado and see that your work puts us right in touch with the blood and flesh world... non make-up. Thanks, your work is necessary. Hopefully it is being shown everywhere else in the world. Few people come down here to see it. It’s minority among minorities, it makes it even more important.
Do we yield to the idea that man is so lost in the starless night of hatred, war, and racism that the glorious dawn of peace and brotherhood will never come? HELL NO!
I was inspired to write this when I saw the exhibition:
The boy played a little game
He walked along the wall
Beside the wall he walked
Quiet, maybe complacent
Though grandpa says that
“It wasn’t always like this.”
And he talked about a man
Who called himself the Fuhrer
And all the suffering he caused
The boy walked along the wall
Playing the game everyday
Not knowing that wall divided two worlds
He would toss a yellow flower
Over the wall
Each and everyday.
He didn’t know why
Or what he expected to happen
But one day that yellow bloom
Soared over the wall
Like a glow soft quiet lighting bolt
Something made him stop
Silence in his size 3 tracks
The bloom came back
Like a beam from heaven
The boy went back
Picked it up
And saw a writing
Attached
“I love you.”
Thank you for bringing such powerful work to the place where it can be appreciated and understood.
Opening the eyes of the world, especially to the comfortably numb Americans is a worthy tribute.
Very nice work, but their is some joy among the sadness and the grime. Your photos are very evocative of the time I spent working in and around Arkhangel’sk.
These are the best pictures of non winning wars.
Thank you for all of your hard work, and especially the encourage to take such great risks for such a worthy cause. I admire you. Keep documenting life, whether political or social. We need people like you to help remind remember.
How else would I know?
Some of the best photos I have seen in years. Haunting - funny - mysterious - great show.
A history lesson and a beautiful, disturbing, haunting short film in one. Spectacular. Why haven’t I known your work?
Unbelievable - man’s ability to self-destruct!
History captured for generations to come. A chronicle of culture which has no boundaries...
Optimistic side is? They have hit bottom they will bounce back.
This exhibition rekindled my respect for the Russians - all they suffered (and still do) the prices they paid to dare ideologies which were deformed by dictators who preferred their power to the changes that would have serviced humanity at large. On the other hand, it also points out how Americans are generally insensitive to the world outside themselves, unless their economic interests, profits, domination are involved. Forfeiting assistance itself reflects an attempt to purchase political favors.. to “buy” another country’s opinions -- thank you for a very sensitive photographic recording by Mr. Suau...very moving and “food for thought” about the past and future.
Powerful, Revealing and Shocking
Mr. Suau -
Thank you for showing me what it is like in the Eastern bloc countries now.
Despite 1989 it looks dismal. Your pictures are striking and sad and send the
images home - to the heart. Glad to read you found the people strong - they
would have to be to survive.
Mr. Suau-
The exhibition is excellent, and presents life beyond what we in the west can
imagine. These people are strong, your portrayals precise. Thank you for sharing
the experience.
Thank you for your courage and talent. How appropriate to have your work displayed nest to the “Every 4 years exhibit”. As we compare the rights of our democracy to the poverty you have showed us - will it make a difference in the activism of our citizens? We will see this in November.
Incredible - is what you have presented to us. Let’s hope the eyes of the world begin to see the realities of what is happening. A very powerful message you have sent - with your stories and pictures.
Frightening reality which exists in the world. More important, what is humanity doing to stop this suffering? --and where is the illustrious United Nations?
We lived through all of that. It is part of us. And now we feel again what we survived in past. It is impressive. Thanks-Ukrainians form Lviv
Painful!! We have huge admiration for the Russian folk, who seem destined to live under horrible conditions - be it under the Tzar, Stalin or “so called” democracy. Why in the world don’t rich nations of the world, guided by the principles of the U.N., help? Too busy making the rich richer?
How wonderfully courageous and admirable to have documented such a poignant piece of emotion.
A powerful, wrenching exposé of Eastern Europe. Certainly a sad reminder that as human beings we have a long way to go before we can call ourselves civilized when one sees the horrifying life part of the world is forced to endure. Beautiful photography.
Speechless.
“Amazing” I can’t believe that the “outside” world is not so much more affluent than in the pictures of this exhibition.
Superlative!!
We have not words!
Splendid
These images opened a whole new world to me. Black and white photographic project an emotion that escapes images on the T.V. Probably because the viewer is given time to think and feel the moment the story unfolds. TV really robs one of the necessary time humans need to feel something especially as important as these images!
Brilliant images as silent witness to what we must never forget.
Well it’s open season in Eastern Europe for the big boys + Coca Cola - Marlboro, etc. As well as the little guys with big hearts, like journalists - photographers!
Well done as I was living in Praha and what you have shown captures a hard change that few in America understand. Thank you.
Do go back to Grozny, to Victory Avenue as it is unimaginably worse than before. Beautiful work.
You captured way beyond a photograph.
I lived in Moscow and Baku - you have done a good job illustrating in photos what is virtually impossible in words.
I truly admire your works knowing a little about the Eastern Bloc countries.
Everything is true.
Very strong work, I appreciate your insight and tell of a story that few Americans are aware of. Thank you!
A moving essay of our time - that we are embarrassingly harboring
from...
Thank you.
Thank you for telling this story.
Inspirational, Beautiful, Disturbing.
Breathtaking.
Was or is America not a self made country? A deep breath about the east side.
Depressingly Impressive!!
Beautiful and moving. Thank you so much for it.
Captures the hopelessness of the situation
Intense. I wish there was more information although emotional information is certainly here,
Just simply moving.
Yes it is like this. But I have also seen places of great beauty, and very hospitable people. Beautiful pictures.
I have an even greater appreciation for my grandparents who had the courage to leave this hellish part of the world 100 years ago and set sail for the unknown in Canada.
Amazing! Powerful to see the real, recent images. Thanks for the display.
I can not bring myself to leave -- so immersed and in the milieu of what you have captured - so sadly brilliant is your work the images - some of which I shall never forget. Thank you.
Never have I looked at images that offered no hope...
Remarkable work. Truly a historical epic. You deserve all the accolades for staying with it and doing such a great job. Social documentary work of such scope and complexity, sadly, is rare to find these days.
This man is a great, great, photographer.
- Denmark
Excellent show: Brought memories of Moscow in the 80’s...
Chilling memorable images of grim reality.
Truly affecting.
Thanks ever so much for enabling us to see these photos. We’ll never forget it.
Hurrah for... something... Life ..
Eye opening. Sad.
We’re impressed. Keep documenting these changing times. You’ve captured the spirit perfectly.
Sad... how do the people come back to Joy?
This place gave me one heck of an idea and understanding of how life really is!
Surprising but it is true.
Wow!
These pictures are moving and emotional. It’s sad to think that human beings could do such a thing to one another, and the images show what it was really like for people in the Soviet Union.
It made us cry.
- MV High School
Very impressive and interesting. Somehow the sun never seems to shine in Russia..Seems to be a depressing place and I have seen it look alot better.
Thank you so much for making the great effort to show us a
slice of life that I haven’t seen before.
--Capetown, South Africa
A compelling show. My boyfriend just returned form serving in Bosnia with NATO and had some pictures that are uncomfortably similar: of burnt out towns..the sorrow, unfortunately it continues...
Excellent show! Everything exactly as I’ve seen it during my E. European sojourns.
A revealing and sad exhibition. Extremely well done, as always. How sad people have to endure this pain. But T.T. pointed out a reverse of fortune, to the extreme..where did it come from?
Congratulations! You captured the emptiness of a world that became without ideology, value and mercy. Thank you for the wonderful job.
Excellent... revealing at what happened after the “fall of communism”. The path to something else (democracy?) isn’t smooth! These places have no democratic or social traditions.
1992: Urgurasi, Romania (the farm picture) literally took my breath away...
Thank you for sticking with your vision even when the places to show your work may seem paltry. It is the Capa’s, Kudelka’s and Nachtway’s and Suau’s of the world that keep a Black and White conscience alive. Bravo!
A shocking reminder.
Went out with shock.
It is all good - but still nobody does anything! Can we not separate ourselves form the reality? Be careful. Some interesting pictures.
What an amazing exhibition -- congratulations to all who created and supported “Beyond the Fall” -- I learned so much.
Many of the photographs depict the feelings and emotions the
people must have felt at that very moment. We appreciate it greatly to have
shared such images with us.
- Lima, Peru
The photographs are extremely amazing, they show the ups and downs of life!
Living - Existing - Its complexities. Great Exhibit!
Fantastic
- Buzz Harthorn (The International Center of Photography)
There is no fairness under the sun. But we all have to struggle no matter whether we are rich or poor.
I saw them in London, even more powerful the second time.
I have no words to express my feelings - Thank you.
Very powerful exhibition. How glad I am that my parents escaped the Russians and made it safely to the US. Yet, I am almost embarrassed to have so much when others have nothing.
I am disappointed by the quality of the pictures. I believe it would have been more powerful in it’s natural state. By using digital technology you loose the essence of the photographers work.
An excellent exhibition. We’re lucky indeed to be living in the USA.
Mr. Suau. I felt you captured how society after the Soviet
Union negatively; which is good and bad. It had an emotional response and backdrop
using photos that are black and white, yet, much more expressive. You did describe
the general mood after the unity, the disunity, the sadness, yet no happiness
of joy. I was looking for a slightly more positive expression.
-B.C. High School student
As somebody who escaped form Hungary in 1956 a real surprise greeted me on revisiting some familiar places half a century later. Well selected pictures.
Potent images - makes me miss my dear friend Cynthia... One of the many lost souls lost to the many upheavals..
Really... not that impressive!
May 1, 2000
“Workers Day”
“But there for the grace of God go I”
I thank God for having been born in this city and this country. My problems
are minuscule in comparison. Most moving.
You have captured the heart and soul of the people there!
Very interesting. You come form this emotional exhibition and then the first thing I heard has been the happy music of America’s “Presidential Campaign”. How crazy is our world? - from the Former east bloc and I am very proud to be from there.
You have opened my eyes with your incredible powerful photographs.
Powerful images. Ignites the horrifying story.
- NY
One of the best exhibitions I have ever seen.
- former Soviet citizen
Wow! the beauty and pathos are so well captured - incredible
photojournalism.
- Orlando, Florida
Congratulations, an incredible accomplishment.
My mother was born in Russia. This very poignant and moving exhibition was painful to view. We must do more. We who live in the U.S. have to make our voices heard.
I think it is wonderful and you are definitely a brave man.
I wonder, what does it do to a photographer to have seen so
much? Thank you for your work. Brilliantly done.
P.S. I just saw some of your images in the Ethnography Museum in Budapest. It’s
a pleasure to find this collection here and to see it again!
The still image has power - emotional and intellectual, more
it would seem as does the moving image.
-Montreal (Quebec)
The only thing more depressing than the pictures was the number of people in the gallery (about 5) most of whom are tourists. The New-Yorkers are too busy shopping. As a Russian living in the West for 8 years I must add that not all is that bad in Russia.
A very moving exhibition. Even if the photos were in color, the feeling would still be in black and white.
Stupendous exhibition. I was particularly impressed by the commentary on how lowest common denominator overshadowed the much more relevant evolution of the F.S.U. Thanks for your devotion and your visual story telling. More people need to know and understand.