Photo Exhibit: "Back and Forth" by Misha Gulko

The man is a social being. This means that for the development of the personality its environment and the space in which this personality grows and develops is very important. Those with whom we are friends, with whom we spend time at work, with whom we encounter in public spaces every day, the language in which we speak. All of us consciously and unconsciously seek understanding, recognition, approval, the reaction of others to our personality. But, endowed with freedom of choice, we often become architects of our own environment.

Heroes of this project unites one: all of us, at some point in our lives, have radically changed that social space, that society, to which we are accustomed from childhood. The majority of immigrants, having arrived to a new place of residence and wishing to organize their lives, are either forced to change themselves, willingly or unwittingly, to a new society. However, for a variety of reasons, New York in this regard is a unique city. It, up to certain limits, allows a person to decide how much he wants to assimilate, to take on the rules of another game, change his environment and his way of life.

As part of this project, I tried to capture 9 families of Russian-speaking immigrants in their home environment, which they created for themselves, over the years in New York, to compare how much the life of parents who left for America at adulthood differs from that of their children, who came to New York more flexible and receptive to changes and changes in life.

The goal is to understand who we are - Russian-Jewish Americans. Living in America - do we stay Russian? Do we feel like Jews? Are we a single community, can we generalize? Or do each of us live in a different world?

This project is an attempt at self-analysis based on the thesis that the house is a mirror of the soul.
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This project is part of COJECO BluePrint Fellowship supported by COJECO and Genesis Philanthropy Group