Russian Visionaries was a multimedia art project that displayed portraits of modern Russian thought leaders alongside their predictions for the future of Russia after the 2012 presidential election. The project was sponsored and developed by IMR and showcased in New York, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris in 2011 and 2012.
The central pieces of the project were the austere black and white photographs taken by Kirill Nikitenko, a well-known Moscow photographer. Among the 54 photographs were portraits of prominent Russian writers, actors, journalists, economists, politicians, and human rights activists known for their strong independent views and their opposition to the current regime. Their ranks included Boris Akunin, Alexei Navalny, Leonid Parfyonov, Sergei Parkhomenko, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Yuri Shevchuk, Garry Kasparov, Yevgeny Yasin, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Lev Ponomarev, and many others.
All the participants shared their predictions of Russia’s future if Vladimir Putin remains in power. These predictions were presented alongside the portraits. Incidentally, the show coincided with the unprecedented mass opposition rallies that began in Russia in December 2011 and lasted through the winter and spring of 2012.
The original idea to bring together Russian intellectual leaders came from Elena Khodorkovskaya, the former wife of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner, who was finally released in December 2013.
