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An X-Ray of Russian Corruption

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Before James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of DNA’s double helix, “Photo 51″ â€" an X-ray photograph â€" helped them identify the molecule’s complex structure. And just as photography made visible what scietists suspected, Misha Friedman is training his camera on what seems like a common trait in his national genetic code.

Corruption.

Mr. Friedman has journeyed through Russia and created a series called “Photo51 â€" Is Corruption in Russia’s DNA” But his images are not documentary evidence of corrupt acts. Rather, they are a visual tour of the ways in which public corruption manifests itself in people’s private lives, radiating outward through Russian society, touching ordinary men and women, and becoming the norm.

“The helix has two lines,” Mr. Friedman said. “In a lot of situations, it is really the government that is at fault. But the other helix has to do with the private sector. It has nothing to do with the state. It’s all about the behavior of individuals â€" their complacency and their acceptance of the u! nacceptable.”

Misha Friedman Russia’•s Chelyabinsk region is home to a number of industries that serve the military, including the Mayak nuclear complex, which dumped waste into local rivers. The area was closed to foreigners until 1992. It has since been deemed one of the most polluted places on Earth.

Wandering the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow last summer, and visiting small towns in Karelia and the Ural Mountains, Mr. Friedman found traces of political corruption everywhere, from a polluted nuclear complex (Slides 7 and 18) to a crooked festival (Slide 4) to a toxic slag heap at a copper smelting plant (Slide 12).

But what he was most interested in â€" and troubled by â€" was the social corrosion and decay that he saw on display, as when poicemen and bystanders watched a man beat a woman in broad daylight (Slide 5). Or when a group of teenagers roped off their remote campsite with tape from a crime scene (Slide 2).

The biggest challenge, he said, was documenting how corruption plays out in people’s everyday lives without condemning individual citizens.

“There’s so much bureaucracy and inconvenience all around that all you want on a daily basis is to simplify,” Mr. Friedman said. “Simplify your routine so you can get to work. So you can get anything done. To get most things done faster, or more efficiently, you have to navigate the system because the laws are so ambiguous.”

Misha Friedman A white ribbon, a symbol of opposition to the current political regime, fluttering from the bar! s of a po! lice detention van outside a Moscow courtroom where three members of the punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison. After a show of support for the three young women, several protesters were detained. The trial is seen as politically motivated and part of a wider crackdown on dissent.

Mr. Friedman, 35, is no stranger to the challenges of daily living in Russia. Born and raised in what is now Moldova but was then part of the Soviet Union, he remembers watching his father bribe traffic policemen. In 1991, when he was 14, Mr. Friedman immigrated to the United States with his family. He studied economics and international relations in school and went to work for nongovernmental organizations abroad, spending five years with Doctors Without Borders in Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union.

In 2005, while working for Doctors Without Borders in Darfur, Sudan, Mr. Friedman picked up a camera and began taking pictures. Three years later, while working in Chechnya, he started o pursue photography in earnest. He spent almost five years shooting a documentary project on tuberculosis and eventually quit his day job to become a professional photographer.

Last year, the Institute of Modern Russia, a United States-based nonprofit group that works to support democratic values and institutions in Russia, commissioned Mr. Friedman to make a visual record of corruption in Russia.

“Corruption is something you have to deal with from the moment you’re born to the moment you die,” he said.

Misha Friedman A truck driving through Muslyumovo, a village on the Techa River in the Urals, which for many years was a dumpi! ng ground! for radioactive waste from the Mayak nuclear complex.

This realization â€" that lawlessness, deceit, bribery, cronyism and impunity are deeply encoded within all aspects of Russian life â€" gave Mr. Friedman the idea to use a camera he had never tried before: a panoramic.

“I think it’s important for projects to have appropriate technical solutions,” he said. “I look at corruption as something that you are encircled by, surrounded by, your entire life. So I thought it would be interesting to use the panoramic format, with the idea of creating a spiral, connecting all the images into one.”

The resulting photographs are stark, black-and-white images that each hint at something gone awry â€" in the body or soul â€" in Mr. Friedman’s early home.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a photographer,” he said. “Doing a project on tuberculosis is not answering any questions, it’s documenting facts the best way you can. Here it is trying to tackle qustions that I have not seen visual answers for.”

Mr. Friedman hopes his project will be the beginning of a conversation about how to deal with corruption in Russia. That’s why the title of his project is an open question, he said.

“Let’s talk about this,” he said. “Maybe the reason why we can’t solve corruption is because our definition is too narrow.”

Misha Friedman A boy playing near the Moscow River next to a street cleared for a government motorcade. Drivers in Moscow face daily road closings while government officials or visiting dignitaries speed through the deserted streets.

An exhibition of Mr. Friedman’s work will open on Feb. 15 and be on view through March 2 at 287 Spring in ! SoHo.

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