Lise Sarfati - Acta Est - 2000

In Acta Est, Magnum photographer Lise Sarfati documents the human and architectural ruins of post-communist Russia during the 1990s: a world of decaying buildings and abandoned factories, psychiatric institutes and detention centres, all peopled by lost and damaged characters. Similar in concept to Luc Delahaye's magisterial Winterreise (see Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol 2, p.257), Acta Est is a journey through the dark heart of Russia, a place of decay, squalor and misery. Sarfati's photographs, mainly taken indoors, depict the crumbling physical remains of a political system that was supposed to bring utopia and it's effect on the people who inhabit these spaces of despair. Taken mainly indoors, these claustrophobic images are deliberately meant to evoke the narrow horizons and inability of the people trapped within to escape their fate. These images of formerly secret closed cities built by forced labour and inmates of prison camps are combined with photographs of another marginalised sub-group within Russian society undergoing gender transition as the shackles of the oppressive society they had once lived in collapsed which provide the only glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak narrative.

The book is neither travelogue nor photojournalistic essay. Rather, Sarfati uses descriptions of the details of the Russian environments which fascinate her to create a visual drama - a personal theatre of dysfunction and deterioration, of change and beauty. The title - literally "it (feminine) is over" from the Latin phrase "Acta Est Fabula" meaning "the play is over" - signals her insistence that the work not be read as journalism but as a work of theatrical imagination.

Born in Algeria in 1958, Lise Sarfati started photographing at the age of 15. After studying the Russian language, she devoted herself entirely to photography. Awarded several important prizes, such as the famous Prix Niepce of the Centre National de la Photographie, Sarfati has exhibited at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and The Photographers' Gallery in London before joining Magnum in 1997.

Condition:
This is the first hardback edition of this astounding photobook published by Phaidon in 2000 (not the later 2007 reprint). No dust jacket as issued. Small dent to top corner of cover. Slight sun fading to spine and edge of rear cover. Original price sticker on rear cover. Otherwise in excellent condition. Binding tight. Please examine listing photos carefully.