The Yerevan gardens have a long tradition and are deeply rooted in Armenian culture. Gaining importance as a source of fresh vegetables in times of crisis and becoming more amateur nature in better times, they make these shifts every time the political and economic situation in the Caucasus changes. They connect the city’s inhabitants with nature but also they connect the citizens with each other. The structures built to make the plants grow go beyond the fences of the properties. They dissolve the borders between private and public space. They also dissolve the border between the city and the countryside, between culture and nature. Finally, they are also representations of the individual imagination of the idea of a garden. Gardens are places where time passes differently, closer to the yearly cycle of nature and one can feel this while spending time with the gardeners.










Feature / Speaking in a loud voice / The Gardeners by Jan Brykczynski
LTA
Nearly 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unipolar has ceased to exist, and the empire is trying to regain its position in the region. Its power of influence radiates into the former Soviet republics, changing their attitudes and taking a variety of forms: the conflicts or accelerated national identity formation. For past 6 years Sputnik Photographers have been investigating if the people living in post-soviet countries still need to be awed by something that does not formally exist any longer.