Other Russias: Victoria Lomasko's Graphic Journalism

Please join us for a talk with graphic reportage artist Victoria Lomasko about her new collection, an anthology of her work from 2009 to 2016, Other Russias (n+1, 2016). Bela Shayevich, translator of Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time, will translate.

Victoria Lomasko is a fixture at Moscow's trials and protests, documenting the tumultuous processes that shape today's Russia. Not content to limit herself to the political life of the country's capital, Lomasko travels around the country and through the former Soviet republics, exploring the domestic, psychological, and spiritual condition of its diverse marginalized groups. Sex workers in Nizhny Novgorod, women in underground lesbian clubs, teachers in a remote village school, and children at the juvenile prison colonies where Lomasko volunteers as an art teacher have been some of the subjects of her sensitive, incisive portraits. With empathy at the heart of her approach, Lomasko is drawn to people who challenge her, whose stories do not necessarily illustrate her own political views. In her graphic reportages, we find a panorama of modern Russian society.