Making Pictures

Cemetery - St.Petersburg, Russia © Stanislav Mazitov

I went to St.Petersburg to visit a man called Eugene who has all the equipment to carry-out the initial stages of a cryonic suspension.  We also went to the cemetery where the body of the first and only cryonics patient in Russia is buried – she is a neuro-patient so only her head has been preserved.  Two of Eugene’s friends, Pawel and Stanislav joined us for the day and it was great hanging out with them, it was made all the more pleasurable as they all spoke such good English.  Stanislav is a pharmacist, but also a keen photographer and he was kind enough to take some pictures of me at work.  He has an interesting style which reminds me of Anton Corbijn.  I took my favorite picture from the whole trip at the cemetery (I will post it up here shortly) so it’s great to have some pictures of me working there.

The One That Got Away

Danilia, Zoum Zoum Cafe - Moscow, Russia © Murray Ballard

Well, on my fourth day in Russia I had the most frustrating experience!  I got off the night train from St.Petersburg in Moscow (absolutely shattered after a terrible night’s sleep) and met my guide Stas who took me straight off to a rehearsal for a promotional presentation on cryonics, which was due to take place a few days later in a trendy new cafe.  Initially I was very disappointed, the place was not particularly interesting and did not seem very relevant to my project, but it did provide me with the opportunity to meet a few more of the volunteers who help out at the cryonics organisation.  So I decided to try to find a suitable place to take their portrait(s).  As you can see from the picture above the cafe was very dark inside, not good for a photographer like myself who insists on using a 5×4 camera and very slow film!  So I went for a wander around outside.

Train Portraits

train-portrait_04 - Moscow, Russia. 2009 © Murray Ballard

I had intended to do a daily post from Russia, but due to a lack of internet access and the busy schedule I set myself, it proved to be impossible.  So, whilst I wade through my contact sheets and scan the negatives I thought I would post up a few pictures I shot on my digital camera.  Most of these pictures were taken on journeys traveling from one place to the next and are of course not at all relevant to my project, but it seems kind of fitting to share these photographs considering the theme of the exhibition and knowing that otherwise they would just get lost on my computer’s hard drive.  I took these train portraits on my first full day in Russia, early in the morning on the way to the cryonics facility just outside Moscow.  In fact I spent a lot of my time in Russia on trains, 4 out of the 6 nights I was there I traveled on night trains between cities – Moscow, St.Petersberg and Voronezh.

train-portrait_03 - Moscow, Russia. 2009 © Murray Ballard

Shameless Self-Promotion

YVI Magazine issue 3: Modern Explorers - Cover

I am very pleased to announce that a selection of photographs from my cryonics project: ‘The Prospect of Immortality‘ have been featured in the new issue of YVI magazine. The theme for this issue (no.3) is: ‘Modern Explorers’. If you go to the YVI website you can see a preview of the issue. I was thrilled to see that I’m in good company – I am a huge fan of JH Engstrom and I thought Rob Hornstra piece ‘Cement Town’ on the industrial Siberian city of Angarsk was absolutely stunning!