Y MINSK

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the arrival of the non-replaceable president Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus has been usually represented in the international media only through such definitions as "the last dictatorship in Europe" and "the country frozen in the Soviet past".

Inside the country official rhetoric of state power creates the image of strong and prosperous Belarus, a country that follows it's own way. With all those red-green flags, conservative thinking governing and slogans - "Flourish Belarus!".

But in the last 10 years a new generation has grown up that does not identify itself with such definitions. Generation Y - those who was born at time the Union was collapsing - met their youth in conditions of big transformations of the post-soviet city, which finally collided with globalization processes. Minsk was seized by the wave of construction, big investment projects that influenced youngsters life and habits. New architectural forms among the soviet buildings were bringing a hope for the changes and created other energy of the place that was not intrinsic for this region before.

I was determined to leave all the definitions that existed outside or inside and to focus on the changes, which came along with globalization: I decided to let the new time speak. I started to watch the life of youth and city's transformation. Minsk - one of the last big cities of the former Soviet Union that faced big capitalist changes - and I wanted to discern how we are fit in and correlate with the new system of values and what is it's local specifics. It's important for me to show the new image of the city related to the new spirit of time and tell the nowadays alternative story of this place.

2011-2020