OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)
Who had heard of Beslan before the Chechen freedom fighters’ hostage-taking in a school in this Russian city resulted in a bloodbath? Since then Beslan is a byword for terrorism and ill-considered government intervention. A year after the events Anastasia Khoroshilova encountered a number of the survivors in Bad-Tölz, in Germany, where they were undergoing medical-psychological treatment. She decided to photograph the children outside the context within we know them, in vacation clothes, against the background of the Bavarian landscape. She combined her photographs with images from the portrait gallery the citizens of Beslan have made as a memorial to the victims. In this way the inner scars left behind by one of the blackest pages in Russian history become visible.
