Pandemic in Russia

Nanna Heitmann’s photo series “Pandemic in Russia” is a subjective, narrative full of the insecurities of the first months of the pandemic in Moscow. In March 2020, as the initial assumption of a global health crisis slowly came true, Heitmann began to deal with the role of a photographer within the existing conditions. In spite of the strict lockdown in Russia, as a journalist she was allowed to leave the house without a special reason. The existing travel restrictions and the unusual experience of restricted mobility threw the well-traveled documentary photographer back on her immediate environment. Exhausted hospital workers, people put into a coma in the prone position line up next to pictures of densely packed groups of people from the Christian Orthodox community at Easter. Waiting lines in front of the food dispensaries illustrate the existential needs that have grown and become more visible not only in Russia as a result of the pandemic. “Pandemic in Russia” allows insights into how the coronavirus is dealt with by Russian politics and society and takes a special look at the country’s dysfunctional social system. The global concern loosens the images as it were, from their immediate situatedness.