Family photographs that caused backlash

When Irina Popova started her assignment to photograph “feelings,” she didn’t realise it was going to spark outrage.

 

At the time, Popova was a 21-year-old journalism student who ran into a young woman named Lilya, near St. Petersburg, Russia.

 

Lilya was pushing her daughter Anfisa in a buggie and after taking some photographs of the two, Popova was invited back to their home, where she continued taking snaps of the family weeks afterwards.

 

She witnessed how freely friends and family of the young woman walked into their home. People partied, took drugs and drank alcohol, all in the presence of little Anfisa.

 

The photographs Popova took of these scenes were then shown in a gallery in St. Petersburg and also shared online - that is when outrage began.

 

Online users weren’t happy about how the child was being treated and they also called Popova an opportunist for photographing the situation and not doing anything about it.

 

“Maybe it’s weird, but my intention was to talk about the possibilities of love on the margins of society, and I hoped to bring more understanding, to build a bridge between people and to raise awareness that bringing up a child is not an easy task,” she said.

 

She now has a book titled Another Family, where she has these images and other documents related to her work.

 

“Basically, by publishing the book, I would like to end the story,” she said. “The main part of the story was shot more than five years ago, and since then life goes every minute further, while photography fixates one moment forever.”