The Russians

Photography exhibition by Nathan Farb, based on a trip he took in 1977 to Novosibirsk as a host of the American exhibition Photography USA, part of a cultural exchange program under President Carter’s administration. Farb photographed a number of visitors to this exhibition. He used a Polaroid camera and gave them the resulting photo. However, unknown to his subjects and to the Soviet authorities, Farb kept a negative of each Polaroid. He managed to smuggle the negatives out of the country with a diplomatic pouch at the US Embassy. The portraits show a diversity of people. Some are dressed according to Western trends of the late 1970s; others are wearing more traditional clothing. In this series, Farb gave the Cold War enemy a human face.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.