Scriptphotography 2025

There is a Russia far removed from the warlike clamor that shakes our consciences, a rural Russia, vast, almost infinite. Gazing at the horizon is dismaying; the eye follows a point and it seems to recede like a mirage. Here, on these vast plains of wind and solitude, rumours of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine rarely reach us. Lost between the wind and snow and the distances that mark the presence of villages, the steppe forces us to consider timeless forms of coexistence, far removed from the incessant repetition of fashions.

Nature shapes women and men, preparing them for harshness from birth, a harshness that is not of the soul but worn like a garment to resist the solitude of the land, after all, as we know, life is beyond the horizon.

Misha Maslennikov has explored the region of the Don, the long river whose waters flow into the Sea of Azov. Life in the Don steppes flows immutably, always the same. There seems to be little time to devote to the fantasy of being somewhere else, beyond that horizon that, although it exists, forces you not to consider it, like a mirage.

Life, if you’re born in the steppe, is all there is. There’s work in the fields, firewood, repairing a fence, tending to the animals. As mentioned, there’s little time for thought; people have fun as best they can, and human relationships inevitably establish new—but always the same—codes of behavior.

Maslennikov’s lens delves into the daily intimacy of these people, and we discover a truly unexpected openness toward others. The villagers, despite the harsh landscape, seem receptive to encounters. A stranger who ventures into these latitudes is greeted with the curiosity and openness one might expect from a special event. Imagine if the stranger is a photographer. Thus, the residents, quickly overcoming the threshold of curiosity, open up to reading, opening up the domestic, private dimension. Between tea and memory, an alliance is forged between humble things, between objects whose essentiality is measured by consumption. 

Maslennikov photographed a distant, almost lost world, silent yet alive, and he presents it to us in the most respectful way a photojournalist can: making himself invisible. And it is precisely from this particular attitude that we see beyond the depths of things: women, men, and children are all part of a community where everyone has their own role, their own specificity. The echoes of war are barely heard from here; the wind would carry them away until they were hidden. The war here is different, it is daily. Here, in the steppes, people fight for survival.