Valery Shchekoldin exhibition explores Soviet street life

A new exhibition featuring the work of photojournalist Valery Shchekoldin explores the political disinformation that characterised the Soviet Union in the Seventies and Eighties. Inverse Perspective at the Memorial Museum of Vladimir Lenin in Ulyanovsk comprises a series of compelling black-and-white photos shot in Tatarstan, Moscow and Ulyanovsk. Among them are portraits of workers, images of children playing, and people marching in the streets waving banners with slogans praising the Communist Party. Talking about this period, Shchekoldin said: “Now that period has become history but history does have a strange habit of repeating itself.”

Born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1946, Shchekoldin started his photography career as a correspondent for a local newspaper before moving to Moscow in 1980. Without an official permit to live or work in the city, he led a clandestine existence and would emerge from his basement flat only to document the world around him. The value of his work has been recognised with a number of awards including the Paris Match Best Photographer of the Year award in 1997. The show runs until 27 October.