Passport (1995(
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became necessary to replace old Soviet passports with the new Ukrainian ones. There was a rush to accomplish this in the shortest possible time. All Ukrainians had to get a new passport within a year."
“In 1994-1995, the social services of Luhansk, a town in southeast of Ukraine, started offering photographers a job of shooting passport photos in homes of the elderly and ill citizens, who could not pay a photographer on their own. This is how I ended up in the homes of these people.
When I witnessed how people were living out the final years of their lives, it had made a very strong impression on me. I was really flabbergasted by one particular house. An old woman who lived there had prepared a coffin for herself. She lived in one room, while the coffin inhabited the other one. She was basically ready to leave for the other world at any moment.
I also took photos of people with some mental disorders. They did not know what was going on, why they were being seated, and why I was taking pictures of them. There was one bed-stricken person who had to be lifted from his bed. Two social workers were holding him in an upright position, and the other two were holding the backdrop. Evidently, he too needed a new passport. In any case, I took photos of the things that I witnessed and captured that particular time.”
