Crimean Sojourn

After Crimea was annexed by Russia last spring, photographer Mikhail Mordasov spent more than three months in the region, over multiple trips, traveling from coast to coast and taking note of the changes he witnessed in the peninsula’s landscape and society.

A group of friends look out over a cliff in Balaklava, an ancient village that is now part of the expanded city of Sevastopol. The ruins of a Genoese fortress, positioned high on a cliff above the entrance to Balaklava Bay, is a popular tourist attraction. Recently it was the site for a Medieval Festival. Balaklava has changed hands many times during its history. An important commercial settlement named Symbolon was founded here by the Ancient Greeks.

I came to Crimea for the first time in April 2014. I had been in Sevastopol for several days, mostly working in the city, when I saw workers hanging the Russian state insignia on the City Hall building one evening. Before that, I did not take note of the building’s empty façade; the Ukrainian state symbols must have been taken down in March, after the referendum to join Russia. It took the new authorities more than a month to acquire and hang the new coat of arms, but when it finally happened, passersby stopped and took pictures.

In late July I visited Crimea for a second time, driving there from Krasnodar region. If before, traffic had been flowing from Krasnodar toward the peninsula, now the ferry crossing was full of Russian vacationers returning from Crimea to the mainland. The traffic back-up began in the town of Kerch and stretched several kilometers to the port; some people waited days to board the small ferry. The traffic was making news and I was asked to investigate it. I got up at five, to photograph as the crowds were waking up, and saw a makeshift kiosk as I trotted past the queue. Two women had set it up to sell food and refreshments to drivers who could not leave the line. They were so tired they just slept right at their “workplace.”

Yevpatoria, whose relatively placid waters made it the home for youth camps in the Soviet era, is a town full of surprises. On one of the streets I noticed several sculptures hiding in the trees: it was an open-air gallery with images and statues of famous people. Putin was the centerpiece of this strange arrangement of sculptures by local craftsmen. They said they would make a bust of Putin this year.

I was photographing a refugee camp not far from Simferopol on a swelteringly hot day with not a cloud in the sky. I spent about three hours with the refugees from Eastern Ukraine and was exhausted and wanted to leave, despite a feeling that none of the pictures I had taken were very good. I took shelter in the shade of a tree to regain some energy and saw a woman peek out from a window of a nearby house to speak to a young man. It turned out that they were husband and wife, but she could not go outside because their child had fallen asleep. They gave me permission to go in and take several photographs, which is when I saw this woman breastfeeding her baby on a nearby bed.

Crimea hosted a Russian patriotic camp for children in late August in a nature area about 20 kilometers from Simferopol, where an old resort was once based. About 100 local schoolchildren and students were sent to the camp for free, and some of them didn’t really understand where they were going until they arrived and saw a giant banner with a black two-headed eagle. “Children love to play war, to storm the enemies of Crimea,” camp director Fyodor Tishkov said. They wake up their coach at 7 am to get more paintball practice or learn new fighting moves.

Sharik, a graffiti artist in Crimea [see Russian Life May/June 2014 ], has said he avoids politics and does not like painting anything that would be seen as a commentary on the situation in Ukraine. Apparently he has changed his mind, as evidenced by this new image found in the town of Sudak, near a local yacht club. The Russia-Ukraine embrace appeared on a wall this summer, local yachtsmen said.

Never had I witnessed a May 9th Victory Day celebration that was a true people’s holiday. In Sevastopol last year it seemed like the entire city had spilled out onto the streets. Crowds gathered at the embankment to watch the parade of ships and the Russian air force squadrons Strizhi and Russian Knights. The lavish ceremony was overseen by President Putin. This street scene was captured between events.

At the Yalta seaside resort, kiosks offer T-shirts touting President Vladimir Putin as “the most polite of people,” or as “the force of Russia.” Others simply show him sporting dark sunglasses, a winter parka, or camouflage fatigues. Once popular retro-Soviet imagery is now less popular. Although ubiquitous in the kiosks, I have seen few people actually wearing Putin shirts, which are apparently popular only as souvenirs.