President Putin launches his most audacious PR stunt to date! See more examples of Russian meteor memes here.

I’m currently in Russia working on a project about preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Photograph: Construction of the Olympic Stadium in Sochi. © McKenzie Funk, February 2013.

I came across this snow covered Lada in Moscow last night. It reminded me of A.D.Miller’s book Snowdrops.

Snowdrop (n):

  1. An early-flowering bulbous plant, having a white pendent flower.
  2. Moscow slang. A corpse that lies buried or hidden in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw.

My photograph ‘Vegetable seller, Bilibino, Russia, 2004’ is featured in the Beyond Words: Photography in The New Yorker exhibition currently on show at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

The exhibition features more than one hundred works by some 65 photographers from across the globe. Although the photographs have been gathered from a wide range of sources – including studios, galleries, archives, and private collections – and range chronologically from 1890 to 2010, every image was published in The New Yorker between 1992 and 2010, a formative period in the magazine’s history. The work in this exhibition was selected by co-curators Elisabeth Biondi and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz exclusively for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

My Polyarnye Nochi series is featured in the current issue of Russian Esquire magazine. To view comments visit the magazine’s website here.

In recognition of International Women’s Day, here’s a photograph from my Motherland series:’Order of Maternal Glory dinner, Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal, Russia, 2004′.

From its official adoption in Russia following the Soviet Revolution in 1917 the holiday was predominantly celebrated in communist and socialist countries. In the West, International Women’s Day was first observed as a popular event after 1977 when the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.

Just picked up a boxset of the Russian Criminal Tattoo series, which includes this print.