Photographing the Moments Between War and Peace
You can’t just flip through James Hill’s new book, “Somewhere Between War and Peace,” for a quick survey of his 20-years-and-counting career
You can’t just flip through James Hill’s new book, “Somewhere Between War and Peace,” for a quick survey of his 20-years-and-counting career
The moments of violence hardened me without my realizing, returning me a stranger to those that I loved. I could still marvel at the infinite whiteness of the Arctic or the golden warmth of an Italian afternoon, but in my dreams, again and again, I would find myself being pulled to an edge beyond which there was nothing. I would fall and fall before waking in my bed or sleeping bag, soaked in sweat and startled to be alive.
A few hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke at a ceremony in the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Sochi in February, marking a year to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, I was watching pensioners strip to the waist and bask in the midday sunshine on a beach a few miles from the Olympic Park.
Link: For Russians, an Old Victory Lives On – Lens Blog – NYTimes.comOn Victory Day, celebrated May 9 each year, many veterans gather at Gorky Park in Moscow. James Hill, a contract photographer for The New York Times in Russia, attended the gathering in 2006, set up a canvas background and took portraits in this impromptu studio of field nurses, snipers, anti-aircraft gunners, wireless operators and partisans.