Salvi Danés (Barcelona, 1985) studied at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya (Catalonia School of Photographic Studies) focussing on documentary photography. His work has earned recognition at national and international competitions, for example winning the WSPA 2008 prize, the College Photographer of the Year, 2011and the FNAC “New Talent in Photography”. His work has been seen in publications such as FOAM, Camera Austria and the British Journal of Photography. Today we take a look at Salvi’s series titled Black Ice, Moscow.
Black Ice Moscow
“A thin and an invisible ice layer, which makes the free movement difficult and damages our self-confidence to choose a direction. An invisible barrier which has a fearful influence on us when moving from one place to another. Leaning in a kind of imaginary wall which makes our path easier and which makes decisions for us. The city is an alien nucleus, full of companions, but empty of partners. Transported by an intangible flow, addressed to observe as extras in a plot with an agreed end.
Moscow is the Soviet paradigm, an enormous city. It has been unknown for other comparable world cities as regards area and population, but neither with the same social system nor with the same regime, since a few years ago. It looks like there is a dislocation in its inhabitants due to the impact of a complex reality, of the result of a convulsed history, which has gone from the tsarist feudalism to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and from communism to the recent economic liberalism. A religion with a strong ideological character, a pillar of the ancient regime and a great barrier for the social change.
A difficult position for people, who are obliged to follow trails and who are so little taken into account when building a critic and constructive voice. Nowadays, it is not completely different. Puttin is carrying out a kind of politics based on the accumulation of power and on the concentration of powers in the Russian Federation instead of a real democracy.
How does this affect its population? The evidence that an arbitrary law governs the state power can’t be denied. The capacity of thinking is placed in the State. A lot of people can say that “this is due to something”, avoiding, in this way, asking nothing to themselves. Why do they delegate thinking to others? Maybe, they do that not to feel marginalization and helplessness, to enforce, deceptively, the feelings of belonging to this society.”
To view more of Salvi’s work please visit his website.