“Silka”, which means exile in Russian, is a photographic exploration of Brighton Beach, NY; the most densely populated Russian-speaking community in the Western Hemisphere.

Though the collapse of the USSR in 1991 changed Russia significantly and stimulated rapid modernization, Brighton Beach savors the past and is a living museum of Soviet nostalgia. A life ensconced in traditions, values and the iconology of the old world beliefs; this close-knit insular world of Soviet émigrés lives a cloistered existence in the shadow of New York City.

Photographer’s note

In 2002, at the age of 16, I emigrated from Moscow to New York. Settling with my family in Westchester County, and already fluent in English, I quickly assimilated into the fabric of American life. Whatever homesickness I felt, I cured by visiting Brighton Beach. There, I stepped off the train into a historical period piece, а wax museum of Soviet nostalgia, full of WWII vets, grandmas in bright lipstick, and shady-looking men in tracksuits. Remnants of another epoch, these Russian-speaking Americans, had created a comfortable mold for future generations of post-Soviet émigrés to settle: a community that insulated itself with a language that had now adopted words like “fun,” “slice,” “train”, and “bye.”

For a young émigré from Moscow, everything was oddly familiar, yet slightly distorted, pickled in the memories of yesteryear.

In 2018, which marked half my life lived in the United States, I moved to Brighton Beach to explore the meaning of this post-Soviet enclave, with its lifestyle and traditions that Russian immigrants were once so eager to leave behind, as well as my own dual identity. I made it my purpose to define this neighborhood, which resembled neither the Russia I left, nor the America I was living in. Indeed Brighton Beach, although popularized by tourists as an extension of the Coney Island sideshow, is its own country.

Photo essay

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