the sociologist

December 9, 2011

Look at this snuggly-wuggly little chickaboo. His name is Vladim, and his parents are very rich. When photographer Anna Skladmann visited Vladim at his house, he asked her how many pictures she was going to take. “Not more than ten,” she told him, unpacking ten rolls of film and getting to work. After the tenth click of the shutter, he confidently got up, went to his room, put on his pajamas, sat in front of his television, and ordered the maid to bring him a tea.

Vladim was five at the time. I don’t know how old he is now, but I imagine it’s still just as easy for him to have you killed.

VICE: What is that environment like, then?
Anna Skladmann: This is a society that is still developing, still drawing inspiration from a hodgepodge of sources. It’s not fully Westernised because they have such a rich history, but I think it’s going to take many years to really shape them. Everything is so new to them that they are extremely impressionable. For example, when I was photographing the children, it was obvious that most of them had been looking at magazines like Tatler and Vogue. You could tell by the way they posed, the things they chose to wear and the reasons they had for posing.

V: How do you explain this need for excess?
I think it’s because they themselves grew up in such desolation, they didn’t get to have a proper childhood. They are trying to provide their children with a childhood by giving them everything they didn’t have growing up. But they get a little confused along the way.

V: I guess that’s what you call a vicious cycle.
A: That’s what happens when there are no traditions to hold a nation. It can’t control itself. They have to re-create their own understanding of themselves before they can maintain a sensible lifestyle. I remember I went to boarding school in England, and the opposite happened there. The wealthiest kids never had any money, and would take the train and the bus everywhere. In Moscow, they have a throng of servants following them at all times. Drivers, nannies, sometimes even bodyguards.

V: What kind of careers did the parents of the children you photographed have?
A: I didn’t photograph the oligarchs. I photographed the newly-formed upper class in Russia. So, there’s a lot of people working with raw material, from the privatization in the 90s. Also, the parents came from the fashion industry, the restaurant business, film, real estate, politics… I had some who were part of the intelligentsia too, but do not confuse them with old money. There wasn’t any money 20 years ago. I guess you can call them the old kind of new.

[Related: Where Children Sleep]

(Source: , via flavorpill)

3:47pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZuwNYyD1GgNX

(Notes: 406)