Desperate nineties in the lens of French photographer Liz Sarfati

French photographer Liz Sarfati from 1989 to 1998 lived in Russia, filming a country at a crossroads in the dashing 90s. These shots from Moscow, Norilsk and Vorkuta have been combined into the photo book "Acta Est".

Liz Sarfati was born in 1958 in the Algerian city of Oran, grew up in Nice. I started taking pictures at the age of 13. In her teens, she studied films by Robert Bresson, Alain Rene and the paintings of the Russian pioneer of documentary cinema Dziga Vertov, and later studied Russian at the Sorbonne. In 1986, she became an official photographer at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. In 2003, Liz moved to California, and before that, she lived and worked for 10 years in Of Russia.

"Acta Est" became the first book by a French photographer. It consists of pictures taken during a long stay in Russia in the 1990s. The publication has nothing to do with travel notes or a photojournalist essay. With these pictures, Sarfati rather wove a bold and detailed description of the Russian environment that captivated her to create a visual drama about trouble and destruction, about changes and beauty. The name of the photobook comes from the Latin expression "Acta Est Fabula", which means "the performance is over". With this title, the photographer insists that her work should not be regarded as photojournalism, but as a work from the category of theatrical fantasy.

Sarfati's photographs capture shabby interiors, crumbling buildings and abandoned factories, which are often revived by lost characters: teenagers and street children. "Acta Est— is an exciting material from photographs that have the same value as a historical document about Russia at the end of the last century and as an example of a photographer's poetic visualization.