PHOTOJOURNALISM EXHIBITION ATTACKED IN MOSCOW
Another exhibition in Moscow is under attack, according to Sophia Kishkovsky at the Art Newspaper. She reports that a photojournalism show at the Sakharov Center has been raided by protesters dressed as Cossacks. This follows closely on the heels of the shutdown of a Jock Sturges show at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography. Last Wednesday, an artist named Anton Belikov splashed paint on pictures of Ukrainian soldiers who fought against pro-Russian rebel forces, taken by the photojournalists Sergei Loiko and Alexander Vasyukevich, and called Vasyukevich a “fascist.” Loiko and Vasyukevich are among the winners of a competition sponsored by the Sakharov Center and the Fotodoc Center for Documentary Photography.
The damaged photos were replaced with signs indicating they will not be restored, since “a public conversation about the war in Ukraine as a tragedy is, unfortunately, impossible in our city,” the director of the Sakharov Center, Sergey Lukashevsky, told the independent television channel Dozhd. The day after the initial attack, protesters tore down the signs and carried a red liquid labeled “the blood of children killed in Donbass,” according to Lukashevsky. In a Facebook post, the center wrote that the attackers shouted: “Rub out those jackasses and save Russia.”
The rest of the exhibition will continue, but Lukashevsky has stated that he would not expose its employees or visitors “to danger and various kinds of attacks.” The center itself is named after Andrei Sakharov, a physicist who went against the Soviet regime and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. A deputy culture minister of Russia, Alexander Zhuravsky, told the conservative television channel Tsargrad that “we are in principle against all kinds of pogroms” but that it is necessary to “understand what risks are involved in holding one or another kind of exhibition.” Tsargrad was founded by the Russian multimillionaire Konstantin Malofeev, who has been accused by the European Commission and the US of funding separatist groups in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
