Offering a moving, confrontational and intimate picture of the life of Afghan women who have dared to show their vulnerability, this book shows their fighting spirit and small steps towards equality that give them and the viewer hope for better times.

Photographer Lucia Ganieva visited the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg not to admire its wonderful art collection but to photograph the guards who keep an eye on the paintings as well as on the millions of art lovers and tourists passing through every year. These guards often work for decades in the museum, as witnessed by the ID they carry on their chests obviously first issued when the guards were much younger. The guards will typically work in the same room or hall for years, and over time one work of art will come to occupy a special place in their hearts. So Lucia photographed the guards in front of their favourite painting, and in doing so she shows us something quite extraordinary: the guards have developed a remarkable resemblance to the persons portrayed in the paintings! Her portraits even shows three portraits of the same woman! Look at the colours, the eyes, the shape of the head, the way they allow themselves to be portrayed! Only the very best photographers are able to see what we ordinary people miss. This stunning, elegant portrait series proves what a great master Lucia Ganieva is.

We live in the Universe of Malevich, though we very rarely notice it. Vadim Gushchin photographs Everyday Objects in such a way that it is immediately obvious that they have originated from Malevichs Black Square. The main idea of design is the sparing use of form. El Lissitzky, a pupil of Kazimir Malevich, was the first to formulate this idea in relation to the industrial object. Malevich used the expressive means of painting sparingly. Lissitzky transformed his world for the needs of production. Consequently, Malevich can be found in the depths of an industrial object. In his rejection of illusionism, Vadim Gushchin follows in the path of Malevich. Because when we talk about pure forms, we recall Malevich his works, reduced to the depiction of the pure plane. A paradoxical effect arises when photographing objects. It would appear that reality is being documented. That is to say, things are presented as they are. But in fact, in order to do this, things are taken beyond their usual context. That is, each separate object is placed in a meta position in relation to reality. And the better the shooting is done, the more accurately the object is reproduced, and the bigger the size, and the better the lens, the more that object will be alienated from its habitual existence. Once photographed, objects rise above themselves. In Gushchins artistic space, industrial objects are transformed into sculptures. And each of these sculptures gives witness to its source the Universe of Malevich. Photography is the royal road into perspective-unconscious. That is, more or less, what Walter Benjamin wrote about in A Short History of Photography. His idea became the principle of development of modernity in this art form. Vadim Gushchin subjects it to scrupulous analysis. In his Cultural Treasures he complicates the conditions of the experiment, introducing colour into his formerly classical black and white series of still-lifes. It comprises a few series, the heroes of which are, for the most part, cultural objects. The books in his photographs do not simply refer to a specific time on the strength of the author/title, but due to their thumbed and faded state they cause tactile-olfactory experiences to arise from the past. Absolutely brand new envelopes demonstrate cardboard elasticity and unwittingly one has to suppress an involuntary reflex of the fingers folding a note to place it there. Musical laser discs, shimmering in the rays of a halted beam of light, as if they visually radiate music, cause something within us to resonate. The objects of this series address namely the cultural subconscious and compel one to think about the origins of that very culture which, as it turns out, is rooted so deeply inside us. With regard to the working surface of Gushchins still-lifes, it should be perceived as being abstract-material. Except for in one or two series (for example, with books, which could be described as the most realistic due to the special spirit of historicism which is manifest in it), it does not remind us of anything. Because the setting is photographed from above, the working surface hovers in space, creating a support for the objects, but not for our efforts to perceive, which are constantly thrown into bewilderment that corresponds in Gushchins compositions to gaping darkness that opposes the objects characteristics. Perhaps this is the most expressive image of his still-lifes, found long ago and cultivated by him. It is the basic concept of his photographic philosophy. Gushchins photography is not created from light, but rather its absence, structuring all of his visual imagery. The heroes in his still-lifes are estranged from all earthly things, like the colour planes of Suprematist compositions. Gushchins photography reveals the fundamental duality of culture: the abstract nature of objects in it and the specificity of colour.

Documentary photographers Jason Eskenazi (American) and Valeri Nistratov (Russian) took to the road in Russia to shoot 4 x 5 colour portraits in various cities and across different levels of Russian society. It was their first time shooting large format so they created a method to shoot each portrait under the same conditions (lighting, distance, pose). Only the locations changed: factory, street, train station, hospital, prison, post-office, sanatorium, etc. They travelled to more than 10 cities & towns, including: Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Krasnoyarsk and Moscow. A white sheet was used in the background for continuity purposes. During the session they documented the subjects name, profession, date of birth, and where the photo was taken. Usually only one portrait was taken for each subject and the process took less than one minute. The two short films included by Abigail Spindle show the photographers at the beginning of the project and near its end. Audio interviews were also recorded where and when possible to let the subjects speak for themselves. No attempt was made to represent all ethnic nationalities, in this series especially from the former Soviet Union, living on Russian territory but instead they concentrated on more or less pure Russians who make up the majority of the population and are thus referred to scientifically as the Title Nation. Jason Eskenazi was born New York and still lives there. He first travelled to Russia in 1991 before the coup that led to the fall of the Soviet Union. In the years that followed he received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant, 1996; the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1999, for his work in Russia and the former Soviet Union, culminating in the book Wonderland A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith (POYis Best Photography Book 2008; Its unusually small for a book of photographs the size of a paperback novel and, like a good novel, its a page-turner. The New Yorker.) In 2004 he received a Fulbright Scholarship that made the project Title Nation possible. Valery Nistratov was born in 1973 in Moscow, Russia. He has been interested in photography since childhood. In 1990, he became a professional photographer when he took up a job as a press photographer for a local newspaper, Za Kommunizm. In late 1993, Nistratov redefined his approach to photography, rejecting news photography in favour of socio-documental photography. He considers everyday social life in society as the principal subject of his photographs, as well as the interaction between man and the environment. In the course of his work on his personal projects Nistratov travelled widely in Russia, the former USSR republics, China and Afghanistan. Mr Nistratovs work has been presented at exhibitions in Russia, France, the US, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Mexico, South Africa, Japan and China. His photographs were published in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Dia Siete, NZZ, WOZ, Le Monde Diplamatic and OjoDePez. In 2004, Nistratov, together with a Swiss journalist Judith Huber, published the book Risse im Patriarchat Frauen in Afghanistan depicting the condition of women in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. He is also the author of Lesostep (literally, forest-steppe), published in 2008.

A portrait of his late cat, put up on a wall in his house by his wife, started to intrigue American artist Elliot Ross. The cat seemed to stare right at him. Ross wondered if the cat had consciously looked into the camera when the photo was taken. What the cat was thinking at that time. In what way the consciousness of an animal differentiated from that of a human being. In a quest to try and find the answers, Ross turned his thoughts and wonderings into a project: Animal. Around the world he portrayed animals and discarded the surroundings afterwards to make the portraits more isolated and powerful.