Moden portrait in Patina project

I grew up in Soviet Russia. My peers and I had Soviet cartoons, cinema, football, skates, bicycles, but what we really wanted were games consoles and video recorders. Then the country in which I was born stopped existing. The abundance of the capitalist world filled the space of Soviet deficit. The cultures of the East and West leaked into each other with Snickers chocolate bars and Chinese Adidas fakes. 30 years later, video recorders and games consoles have been packed into the smartphone. I go to the magazine and buy “Soviet” things. I go out to flea markets and look in the cupboard and garages of acquaintances. In photographs, in the hands of young people, even those who did not live in the Soviet Union, these things turn into paradoxical objects. The objects that promise of a brighter future that will never arrive.