February 2008, Ismailovo. Shoppers find everything imaginable at the enormous flea market in Moscow. Tourist goods such as souvenirs are available, but so are appliances and clothes for the average Muscovite.
March 1994, Korolev. Maria and her granddaughter Masha spend time at home. They are part of an extremely close knit family — as are most families in Russia.
February 2008, Korolev. Even though Masha lived in America a while and works in Moscow, she still lives with her parents and grandmother and the family is still extremely close.
September 1994, Ismailovo. This pensioner was selling English language books at the flea market, supplementing her income as inflation made retirements evaporate.
February 2008, Ismailovo. Shoppers find everything imaginable at the enormous flea market in Moscow. Tourist goods such as souvenirs are available, but so are appliances and clothes for the average Muscovite.
ERIC DOUGLAS | Courtesy Photo/
March 1994, Korolev. Maria and her granddaughter Masha spend time at home. They are part of an extremely close knit family — as are most families in Russia.
ERIC DOUGLAS | Courtesy Photo/
February 2008, Korolev. Even though Masha lived in America a while and works in Moscow, she still lives with her parents and grandmother and the family is still extremely close.
ERIC DOUGLAS | Courtesy Photo/
September 1994, Ismailovo. This pensioner was selling English language books at the flea market, supplementing her income as inflation made retirements evaporate.
Eric Douglas was working on the Charleston Newspapers Metro Staff in the early 1990s when a friend and mentor invited him on a trip to Russia in January 1993. The other travelers were all educators who were visiting to work with one of the suburbs of Moscow. The Soviet Union had broken up a little more than a year before, and teachers there were realizing their textbooks and teaching methods were outdated and wrong.
That was the first of half a dozen trips Douglas took to Russia between 1993 and 2008, when he was able to return to rephotograph the people and places he had seen before.
The result is “Russia: Coming of Age,” a photo exhibit featuring 30 images, 15 from the 1990s and 15 taken in 2008 — some of them depicting the same people 15 years apart.
The name, Douglas said, came about “because that’s how it felt. The country was leaving the communist period and coming into the modern age.”
“I think it is important to separate the Russian people from the Russian government,” he added.
The exhibit will be open Jan. 24 to April 7, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays, in the library on the Marshall University South Charleston Campus, located at 100 Angus E. Peyton Drive.
Douglas will give a free presentation on the exhibit Friday, Feb. 7, at 6 p.m. The public is invited to attend. For more information call 304-746-8910.
