[x]

Passport

Alexander Chekmenev
Dewi Lewis
ISBN 978-1-911306-06-1
300 x 225 mm

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became necessary in the newly independent Ukraine to replace the old Soviet passports with new Ukrainian ones. There was a rush to accomplish this, with all Ukrainians being required to get a new passport within a year. In 1994-1995, in Luhansk, a town in southeast Ukraine, social services began employing photographers to take passport photos in the homes of those who were elderly or ill and could not themselves afford to pay a photographer. Alexander Chekmenev was one of them. Passport is a time machine showing us a way of life that by now has vanished. People whose identity is reflected by their possessions. Possessions that fit entirely into the small rooms in which they live. The magic of Chekmenev’s photographs, who are as dense as a Jheronimus Bosch painting, is that you’ll discover a new detail in them each time you look.