Russian Sexual Revolution


  • Photographer
    Yevgeny Kondakov
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention

When the USSR collapsed, it wasn’t just the economic and political systems of Russia that went through a revolution. Russians also went through a sexual revolution as profound, liberating, and also traumatic, as anything experienced in the political or economic spheres. It took place with the delay of half a century from Western countries, but at express tempo. Everything changed in a flash. One day, unmarried couples were not allowed to share a room in a hotel, and pornography was banned throughout the entire USSR. As one dowager famously remarked, ‘there is no sex in the USSR’. And then, almost overnight, Russia became one of the wildest places on the planet: strip clubs, massage parlours, nudity in the media, nudity at rock concerts, nudity in bars, porn, widespread prostitution… all the benefits of free market capitalism. Many Russians initially embraced the sexual revolution as a refreshing harbinger of change and progress. This album is a photographic investigation of RUSSIAN SEXUAL REVOLUTION of the 1990s in all its wildness, its strangeness, its vulgarity, and its innocence. PHOTOGRAPHER: YEVGENY KONDAKOV is free-lance Russian photojournalist. His photos have appeared in some of the top magazines in the world - Stern, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Paris Match, and others. The exhibition of his multi-year photo investigation of Russian Sexual Revolution took place in Noorderlicht gallery, Netherlands in 2009. The book is published with both Russian and English text and captions by Octopus Russian publishing house .

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