Russia in Black and White

In the midst of virulent heat waves and toxic smoke clouds I travelled to Moscow to create a short project on life in the city and country in modern Russia. The work starts in Moscow in the dense south of the city and documents a journey north through the suburbs into a rural Russia not more than 300km away over a couple of weeks, the subjects and settings are personal but the insight universal.

These images were captured entirely on an iPhone 3GS with no post production or editing, instead of the original camera app I used the "Classic Toy" app with an overexposed black and white film preset. As an SLR user it was challenging to use a mobile for this project, especially with an app that disables the autofocus properties of the iPhone camera but it was an exciting constriction and pushed me to think about composition and context more than I usually would with my Canon cameras.