Eastern Soul - A Photographic Odyssey

Hookers, mafia and oligarchs? A new photographic exhibition by emerging British photographer Kit Fordham shatters the common Western stereotypes of a fractured and fractious Eastern Europe.

Rather it seeks to show that the Orthodox Christian faith is, in fact, a key anchor in the lives of young and old alike while life around them changes inordinately. The accents of these changes feature too in the exhibition including as it does nightlife, work life, school life and home life.

'Eastern Soul' represents the first major effort by a Western visual artist to examine the relationship between the revived Orthodox Christian Church and post-communist identity, made possible through rare access to Orthodox holy places and a camera blessed by the Patriarch of Moscow and All The Russias.

This provocative, hauntingly beautiful photographic odyssey is the result of years of work throughout Russia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania forming the first installment of an ongoing project across the Orthodox Christian world. At a time when East-West tensions are on the rise Eastern Soul provides a prism through which life in the Slavic East can be viewed; lurching toward the future yet strongly anchored by the traditions of the past: two thousand of years of Orthodox Christian tradition and less than 20 years of capitalism forming an inseparable whole.

The exhibition is taking place at Pushkin House from Tuesday May 20th to Friday June 6th and is open Monday to Friday from 10am to 5pm.

Find out more about events at Pushkin House.

How to get there

The closest tube station is located at Holborn.

If travelling by bus the 1, 7, 8, 19, 25, 38, 55, 59, 68, 91, 98, 168, 171, 188, 242, 243, 521q and X68 all serve the area.