Freedom House: How Crimean Youth Party
Photographer from Crimea, lives in Simferopol. Worked for RIA Novosti, now works for Associated Press and Crimean media outlets. Is taking a Fotografika school online course. His portfolio won the review in the 2016 Uglich Photo Festival.
— I started documenting the informal movements in Crimea one and a half years ago. The alternative club called Frigate (renamed vDOskY bar one and a half months ago) attracts youth subcultures from all over the peninsula. It hosts exhibitions, poetry nights, concerts, rap battles, tattoo parties that attract young people from different subcultures. The venue has been there under different names for five years.
Most people are very similar — in their opinions, behavior, habits, and view of the world. They go along with the fashion and the existing social order. Society dictates their values and way of life. But there are also those who live in their own world and by their own rules. Such people stand out in the crowd, society doesn’t understand them, and therefore immediately views them in a negative light.
Freedom for these people is the lack of restraints and limitations, without which life in society would have been impossible. In the modern world, there are very few places free of politics, social status, religious beliefs and other things that can divide people. Places where you can be yourself and not think about your appearance or behavior.
Frigate is one of those places. There is no format: your age, profession, or social standing does not matter. You can do more than just feel freedom here, everything breathes with it. This is a place where people don’t fight — all hostility stays outside. That’s why Frigate is a second home for those people who constantly encounter stigma and are not understood by people around them. People can be themselves here and live their chosen lives.
