28/10/2025
with .repost
・・・
USSR 1991...
New Edition
In January 1991, Keizo Kitajima began a year-long series for the Japanese magazine Asahi Graph, traveling to all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union accompanied by the journalist Kazumasa Nishioka. Kitajima, then at a turning point in his career and about to give up on snapshot photography altogether, unexpectedly found himself documenting the final months of the USSR. Only days after the final installment of the series was published in an Asahi Graph issue in December 1991, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.
In his photographs, Kitajima captured something essential about each place he visited, not through symbolic locations or famous figures, but by focusing on ordinary people, whose stories would otherwise never be told.
This 2025 publication of “USSR 1991” is part of an ongoing re-examination of Kitajima’s past work, following books such as “European Diary 1983-1984” and “New York (New Edition).” As part of this process, Kitajima decided to pair his USSR 1991 photographs with a series he shot between 1983 and 1984 in various Eastern European cities.
In addition to an afterword by Keizo Kitajima, “USSR 1991” also includes an essay by Shino Kuraishi.
USSR 1991 by Keizo KITAJIMA on shashasha.co!
#北島敬三
