Spring, 1996. The train station in Vladivostok is the end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The building has always been spectacular and had just undergone a major restoration. I rode the Trans-Siberian between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk a couple times, an overnight trip.
35mm silver gelatin
Fall, 1995.
35mm silver gelatin
Far Eastern State Technical University, Vladivostok, Russia (1996).
Subotnik was a day of service held over from Soviet times. I joined my architecture classmates and Professor Grigory Ignatov (back row, third from left) to clean up around our campus which overlooked the Golden Horn Bay. My friend Valera Savostenko (front row, center holding shovel) is now also a professor in the School of Architecture & Design.
35mm color print
November 1995. I love these photographs of The Troika from Khabarovsk: Andrea, Michelle & Eve. I believe both of these are from the Thanksgiving visit to Vladivostok. I’m almost positive the wonderfully expressive look I captured from Andrea (at left) was actually her telling me to hurry up and snap the shutter. This photo is at the viewpoint at the end of Svetlanskaya Street above Sportivnaya Gavan.
35mm silver gelatin
November, 1995. I love these photographs of The Troika from Khabarovsk: Andrea, Michelle & Eve. This photo is saying goodbye on a platform at the train station. The train from Vladivostok was an evening departure arriving the next morning in Khabarovsk.
35mm silver gelatin
A weekly market on the main square.
35mm color print
Spring, 1996. Ash and Maggie, my good friends from down under, were headed back to Melbourne for a couple weeks and asked if I’d like to get out of the dorm and watch their cat, Taz, while they were away. A chance to have a clean, warm apartment over on Posyetskaya Street all to myself—you bet! This was a shot from the balcony looking up the street. Taz liked to sit outside. It was a quiet street but there was some good people watching. Taz was pretty playful and a bit of a character. We got along great as roommates.
I vignetted the lower right corner with the camera strap but even with the flaw, I’ve always liked this photo. It captures residential Vladivostok.
Another time (not on my watch) Taz leapt from the balcony and fell three stories into a rebar grated window well below. He lost a few teeth and beat himself up terribly—hid in a closet for over a week once he was found and brought back upstairs. Poor cat.
35mm silver gelatin
Fall, 1995.
35mm silver gelatin
Vladivostok, Russia (1996).
This was a communist party rally in the main square prior to the presidential elections. Zyuganov was the Communist Party candidate running against Yeltsin. Zhironovsky was the Liberal Democratic Party candidate and Yavlinski was with the progressive Yabloko Party.
35mm color print
Vladivostok, Russia (c. 1996). Demonstrations for the upcoming presidential elections, this is a communist party gathering on the main square.
35mm color print
Vladivostok, Russia (c. 1996) Demonstrations for the upcoming presidential elections, this is a communist party gathering on the main square.
35mm color print
Vladivostok, Russia (1996). This performance of traditional singing and dancing was part of demonstrations for the upcoming presidential elections.
35mm color print
December, 1995. New Year’s Eve is the biggest holiday in Russia but December and January are busy with Christmas, New Year, Old Christmas, and Old New Year. This is the tree with the “White House,” the regional seat of government, behind it.
35mm silver gelatin
Fall, 1995. Vladivostok being newly open to foreigners and western investment had a small population of expats, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Greeks, Danes, Scots, Canadians, Americans, and more. The population ranged from maybe 150 to 200 residents in summer to probably under 50 in winter. Dave Poritzky had a multi-story apartment known affectionately as “The Café” where anyone was welcome to drop in at almost any time. The first photo is a group of regulars (expat and Russians) at the attic kitchen table. (My camera had an automatic setting that I got a lot of use out of!) We had just returned from holding Vladivostok’s first inaugural St. Patrick’s Day Parade (more on that later). I don’t know what I would have done had I not found this amazing gang of folks. Most of us are still in touch and, even though we are in all time zones across the globe, have had Zoom meetings together as recently as 2020.
35mm silver gelatin
November, 1995. Of about 180 students from the U.S. on the Middlebury College study abroad program, just 13 of us were in all of Siberia and the Far East. The students in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Khabarovsk joined us in Vladivostok for the week of Thanksgiving. This was taken at a restaurant called «Океан».
35mm silver gelatin
Fall, 1995. This is the shoreline of the Amur River in Khabarovsk.
35mm silver gelatin
Spring, 1996. I was the first and (as far as I know) only western student to attend Far Eastern State Technical University (ДВГТУ) in Vladivostok. I attended the School of Design. Here I am on Svetlanskaya Street with professor and friend Grigory Ignatov.
35mm silver gelatin
Vladivostok, Russia (1996).
This billboard on the main square of Vladivostok would change monthly. In late spring, it announced the arrival of Victory Day, the celebration of Germany’s surrender at the end of WWII.
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I and my study abroad friends over at Far Eastern State University decided to go as a group to see the Victory Day celebrations. When we arrived, we suddenly became very self conscious because we realized one of our fellow students was a Japanese national and started to worry about how he would be received. Until 1993, Vladivostok had been strictly closed to foreigners and even Russians from other cities for about seventy years. As it turned out we had nothing to worry about. We were all welcomed with open arms.
One of the people we encountered was this man with his medals on his brown suit jacket. My memory has faded but I believe he said was only surviving one of fourteen friends who went off to fight in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and had served three tours of duty. He teared up while telling us his story: “Why did I survive?”
It was emotional for all of us. He was pleased that we had taken the time to come join the celebrations and gave us each a big hug, including our Japanese friend to whom he said, ‘After all, it was so many years ago and now we are all friends.”
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Vladivostok, Russia (9th of May, 1996).
Victory Day, celebrating the surrender of Germany at the end of WWII, remains an important holiday across Russia. In Vladivostok, men and women dressed in their old uniforms, donned medals, and celebrated in the parks with singing, eating, and the obligatory vodka.
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Veterans singing for Victory Day celebrations in the park.
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July, 1995. This is me standing in front of my dormitory at Far Eastern State Technical University (ДВГТУ). My room was on the top (10th) floor facing the hill behind the building. There was a regional coal strike that went on for months and the city had rolling power outages and was without hot water (which heated the building). Even when the coffin-sized elevator worked, you didn’t want to use it in case the daily rolling power outage should hit while going to your floor. I was issued two mattresses, one for the narrow bed frame (which resembled a hide-a-bed couch frame) and one for the wall next to the bed. The wind came over the mountain hitting my window and blew through wide cracks of daylight in the wooden frame. By the time the trickle of tepid water came on in November, an inch of ice had formed over the inside of the window, mercifully preserving us from drafts for the rest of the winter.
35mm silver gelatin
Fall, 1995. Vladivostok is a naval port which is part of why it had been closed to foreigners up until 1993. Golden Horn Bay was lined with Russian warships and submarine sightings were occasional. Two years prior, the thought of me freely walking around and taking pictures would have been unthinkable.
35mm silver gelatin
Vladivostok, Russia (1996).
The ocean freezes over for a couple months. This was about half a mile out but ice fishers went out much farther. I set the camera up on a wooden crate left behind by a fisherman. My hat is nutria fur.
35mm color print