Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
Anastasiia
BEST DUTCH BOOK DESIGNS
  • Christian van der Kooy (NL)

SOLD OUT

210 × 270 mm
168 pages
English + Ukrainian
Softcover with linen cap and folded insert
TEC054
First edition: 750
9789492051271
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection
  • Anastasiia - The Eriskay Connection

Concept and photography:
Christian van der Kooy

Texts:
Anastasiia
Christian van der Kooy

Translation:
Björn Remmerswaal (English)
Maryna Slonenko (Ukrainian)

Editing:
Iris Sikking
Christian van der Kooy
Rob van Hoesel

Design:
Rob van Hoesel

Scans and reproduction:
Fotolab MPP

Lithography:
Marc Gijzen

Print:
NPN Printers (NL)

Binding:
Patist (NL)

Supported by:
Stroom Den Haag
Yukon Software

Anastasiia is a declaration of love from a Kyivan student to her foreign lover and her native land, Ukraine. Through parallel streams of documentary photographs, Skype screenshots and texts, a dialogue between Anastasiia and her lover, the photographer Christian van der Kooy, is reconstructed. The photo book covers a period of two years in which Ukraine faced major changes.

Anastasiia’s report is above all an exploration of her everyday life and a reflection on intimacy in times of the Russian annexation and information warfare. By conveying Anastasiia’s memories, Van der Kooy sheds his very own light on the creative way the Ukrainian people deal with recent events in Kyiv, Odessa, and Crimea.

The book describes, among other things, the ‘removal of communism’, such as the bringing down of Lenin’s statue in December 2013 and the manual scrubbing of the Maidan Square after the Revolution, but also National Women’s Day, Crimea just before the annexation, and the relationship between religion and superstition.

In the current Ukrainian geopolitical discourse, there is an urgent need to define a cultural identity that embraces the mind-set of the generation born after the independency in 1991. Van der Kooy aims to contribute to this, with his fresh look at Ukraine.

Christian van der Kooy studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. His work consists of documentary photography, short films and soundscapes. For the past ten years, Van der Kooy has been working on several long-term projects in Eastern Europe. Analysing and interpreting reality, by creating a new context, has become the keynote of his process. Sense of place lies at the heart of his work. He is particularly interested in the interaction of people with their surroundings, with the landscape: spaces of coexistence, where a personal history generates cultural and social transformations.

  • Best Dutch Book Designs 2018

“The mix of the intensely personal with what one would consider documentary material in addition to the mix of two clearly distinct voices (that also try to make sense of each other) lends the book a dimension absent from many (actually most) other documentary photobooks I know. There is a clear red thread running through the book, but it’s one of human uncertainty and of longing.” (Jörg Colberg)

CPH Mag

YOUR CART
  • No products in the cart.