UNTITLED (Belarus, 1989)

April 26, 1989. Demonstration in memory of victims of Chernobyl, Minsk. This demonstration was organised by the Belarussian Popular Front (an opposition party) and Belarussian intelligentsia. As a result of the disaster at the nuclear reactor Chernobyl, in The Ukraine, one third of the territory of Belarus was contaminated with radiation. The Belarussian government however concealed information about this danger, which made the demonstration an act of political resistance. After Belarus became independent in 1991, the Belarussian Popular Front assumed a role in the government.

PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

Towards the end of the 1980s the Belarussian Uladzimir Parfianok did portraits of about 25 of his countrymen. These were people who did not fit in the communist system, although they had been born into it and had to function in it. According to Parfianok, the degree to which they literally exposed themselves corresponded to the degree to which they did that figuratively. Most of the photographs were made in the homes of their subjects, without adding any items to the backgrounds. A number of the subjects - such as the man in the gas mask reading the newspaper Sovietskaya Kultura - decided for themselves how they were to be portrayed. Parfianok used an analogue camera and coloured and scratched the photographs by hand. Each result is as unique as the person it records.

PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)