Passport

Author: Alexander Chekmenev
Publishing house: Dewi Lewis Publishing
Year: 2017
Size: 23X31,5
Language: English

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became necessary in the newly independent Ukraine to replace the old Soviet passports with new Ukrainian ones. There was a rush to accomplish this, with all Ukrainians being required to get a new passport within a year.

In 1994-1995, in Luhansk, a town in southeast Ukraine, social services began employing photographers to take passport photos in the homes of those who were elderly or ill, and could not themselves afford to pay a photographer. Olexandr was one of the photographers commissioned to go door to door during this national campaign. And so he ended up in the homes of these people, along with the social workers whose more usual job was to provide free medicines and groceries.