Benoît Grimbert

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Nostalghia

Nostalghia, 2004
22 photographs

“Nostalgia isn’t just about looking to the past; it's about feeling the present as already past and the future as over.”


Serge Daney, “Exil en Nostalghia”, La Maison cinéma et le monde (about the film Nostalghia, by Andrei Tarkovski)


Named after Empress of Russia Catherine, Yekaterinburg was one of the theatres, real or symbolic, of Russian history in the twentieth century. Shortly after the October Revolution, members of the imperial family were executed there; during the Stalin period, it was one of the administrative centres of the Gulag; from 1960 to 1990, in the Cold War context, it was a “closed city” (with regulated access, and off-limits to foreigners); in the 1990s, it was the scene of a bloody battle between mafia groups for political and economic control.

When this series of photographs was taken in 2004, at a time when the city was taking its development model from the great business centres of the West (“Ekat City” is today the striking result of this), these many layers of time were still visible: barely 15 years after the city opened, time seems to stand still. The passage through the nearby industrial town of Polevskoy, and even more so through the small village of Abramovo, completed the picture.


Horse Latitudes

Atrocity Exhibition 

2023

The Return of the Durutti Column

2018

Nuclear Winter

Deux ou trois choses

2018

Space Oddity 

2017

Neuköln “Heroes”

2013

Lips that Would Kiss

2011

Stains 

2011

A1, the Great North Road

2009

A406, North Circular Road 

2008

Normandie

2006

Nostalghia 

2004

Verso 

2002