Grégoire
Eloy
Wizowa
Nostalgia, traces of
the past and fragments of collective memory in former republics of
the Soviet Union.
For the last three years Gregoire Elroy follows with his camera the
traces of history and collective memory on forgotten territories of
Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union.
After his first trip and first series of photographs on the new outlines
of Europe in 2003, awarded with a Bourse du Talent Reportage fellowship
(Photographie.com, Kodak, Picto and Prophot) in June 2004, Gregoire
Eloy decided to expand the project around the theme of memory and
traces of history in this geographical zone (Kaliningrad and Romania
in 2004, Ukraine in 2005, Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2006)
Following Soviet history and nostalgia.
Together with the EU integration of the Eastern block, Europe recreates
its history and memory. A history of conflicts, people’s migration,
persecution, totalitarian regimes.
The question of opening to the East and relating to history become
evident with the fall of the Soviet Union and regaining (or gaining)
independence by numerous “satellite states”: the Baltic
countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, etc. Other countries,
like Poland and Romania freed themselves from Russian chains and finally
entered the road of democracy, despite the activity of the “apparatchik”
generation in power and an alarmingly high corruption level.
Stigmata of the past are still too visible in this part of Europe,
at town squares where Lenin’s monuments still stand, in too
many memorials, landscapes soaked in melancholy, in people’s
mentality. In most of these new EU territories it seems that time
stopped and the population has frozen in this temporal no man’s
land.
Questioning orange revolution in Ukraine and the destabilization of
Yushchenko’s government show how difficult it is for these countries
to pass to the West, in spite of the political will and the project
of united Europe. Doubt is still present in the hearts of the people.
Nostalgia for communism and Soviet Union is still strong. It is especially
striking outside big cities, in places were we discover unstable life
conditions of peasants and workers.
There are few political regimes like the Stalinist one, that make
such strong and destructive impact on society, borders or states.
The anomaly of Kaliningrad Oblast in the middle of Europe, attachment
to the Russian language in the Baltic countries, countless number
of conflicts in the Caucasus region, open and hidden, show the legacy
of this hard to accept politics.
The population of former USSR seems to be torn between nostalgia for
the past era and a wish for change and modernity.
Born in Cannes in 1971m Gregoire Eloy is a self-taught photographer
(since 1994 he learned as an assistant of Klavdij Sluban and Stanley
Green). In September 2003 he decided to quit his position in a company
to fully devote himself to photography.
Winner of the „Bourse du Talent” contest in photorepoert
category in 2004. He joined LUCE group in 2007.
His last August trip’s effect is “Hotel Georgia”,
a series of colour photos showing the poverty of 250 000 refugees
from Abkhazia and North Ossetia living since the end of the 1993-94
conflict in the deserted hotels on the Georgian territory and existing
in total inactivity.
Exhibition place :
Polska 30 (ul. Polska 30, Gdynia)
August 20th – September 20th; Wed.-Sun. 11-19
opening August 19th 17.00
