Housed in a green box with a gas mask laid into the hinged lid which is closed with a buckle. The green box is housed in a blue cloth slipcase with hinged lid with red text in Russian on the spine.

With eleven photo lithographs on card laid into the box.

Signed on both the final lithograph and the translation.

Artist's Statement:

St Petersburg, 2010. 370 × 450 mm

Drama in a wooden box with a gas mask. 10 leaves - card board, lithograph, author’s offset. A limited edition of 12 numbered and signed copies. Wooden slip case (400 × 480 × 90 mm) & a cardboard safety slipcase. In Russian. Appendix: English translation of the text and commentaries of M. Karasik.

In 1923 Sergey Tretyakov, a colleague of Vladimir Mayakovsky during the 1920s, wrote a play called Protivogazy (GAS MASKS). It was staged on the factory floor of the Moscow Gas Factory by young Sergey Eisenstein. The subject of the play is an accident involving a gas leak at the factory, requiring immediate repairs to a gas pipe. But it turns out that the factory has no gas masks. Instead of gas masks, the factory director buys a case of wine. His young son, a member of the Komsomol (Communist Youth Organisation), joins other workers in an attempt to repair the pipe and is killed. His pregnant wife decides to call her son ‘Gas Mask’.

This was the way things were in the 1920s.

In the 1930s everything changed. There were gas masks for every Soviet citizen. Photographs of surgeons, tractor drivers, skiers, soldiers, pioneers, and horses in gas masks were the most common subjects for photographs in the 30s. These subjects are the illustrations for my portfolio, which is printed in an edition of 12 copies and consists of 10 lithographs.

Included in the special exhibition at the Library of Congress on 19th April, 2013 for CODEX Mexico.