Julia Borissova sent me her book which is getting a lot of attention lately ie. here, and here, and can be seen at several festivals this year such as Le Bal (too late), or Kassel (coming up in October) as it has been, rightfully so, nominated for the Fotobook Festival, 2013.

It is a combination of archive material and new photographs which document small towns along the Volga river which were partially or completely flooded in the 1930s by major hydro-electric projects which left 800 villages and towns under water. Julia has gone back to these places, most of which were only partially submerged and the residents have rebuilt lives in the last 70 years. Unlike most archive/new work hybrids, the lines between her own images and the archive images are very loose and blurred and sometimes not identifiable. As she states, hers are “made on film without any post-production” and in many cases, where there are no physical clues, its hard to see the 70 year gap. A somewhat haunting reminder that alot of the lame ideas which have come in the past, will probably come to us again in the future. Photographers will be there to document the tragedies and artists will come along and present them to us for reflection, and it all starts over again…

Julia has a much better documentation of the book on her site. Where you can also place an order. I would order soon as there are only 100 books and I’m sure they will sell out after Le Bal and Kassel. 

Thanks Julia, I have a scary, overwhelming stack of about 4000 slides of an archive of a different river I should be digging into, this gets me motivated to start scanning.

152 pages

16×22 cm

b/w and color images

limited to 100 signed copies!