In 2009, Valery Klamm, a photographer from Novosibirsk, launched a photo project about elusive provincial Russia. This photoblog, called “Birthmarks on the map” (Rodinki na karte), quickly became popular for introducing poorly-known people and places. The idea of “our little homeland” as portrayed on Klamm’s website struck a patriotic, if unorthodox, chord.
Last year, Klamm wrote that “our motherland — in the sense of a supra-idea, a general idol that is worshipped and defended by all, in which we are born and to which we owe a debt — has ceased to exist. Spaces are cut off from one another and atomised, and the relationship between the people and ‘their’ homeland has become blurred and unclear. Everything is unfamiliar: there’s nothing left to love, nothing left to live for… My homeland for me is extraterritorial — a series of faces and fates.”
Klamm is now preparing his book The Siberians for publication — a collage of photographs and stories of “ordinary and exceptional” people living in the depths of provincial Russia. Over the years, these photographs have appeared on Rodinki na Karte. The photoblog is entirely financed by Klamm himself, and he raises funds via crowdsurfing platform.
