Picture Series
Tamina-Florentine Zuch Left to Die
April 6, 2019. The Russian city of Togliatti lies on the Volga. After Togliatti became a city of great potential in the 1960s, it became famous for gang warfare in the late 1990s.
April 5, 2019. The local phosphorus factory, which closed down in 2003, was not only a supplier for car factories, but also for drug addicts, who stole the substance in order to cook krokodil. Krokodil was consumed primarily in the late 2000s. It was difficult to make: consumers would buy some of the ingredients at drugstores, steal phosphorus from the factory and cook up the krokodil in their own kitchens. The odour was intense; all the neighbours knew what they were doing. They had to take the drug while it was fresh. Today, consumption of krokodil has decreased. The most popular drug is now speed, a combination of ingredients that are mixed together. It is much cheaper, easier and more discreet to prepare and consume. Speed is either smoked using a repurposed light bulb or injected.
April 5, 2019. Igor is a clan member and has served more than twelve years in prison for robbery and drug possession. He shares an apartment with his father and two friends. They are all unemployed and addicted to drugs and alcohol. Igor has just returned from another prison term. His fifth child was born just a few days before this. His wife, also a drug addict, moved in with her parents after giving birth. Since the birth, her legs have been paralysed. She did not stop taking drugs, even while she was pregnant.
April 5, 2019. Sasha in his parents’ apartment. He is trying to get sober. He has known since childhood that he is gay. His parents took him to a psychiatrist in order to “set him straight”. He started acting as if he were “normal”, but it tore him apart. He started drinking and taking drugs; he never felt accepted. He roamed around in cemeteries and wondered what it would be like to be dead. One day, when his mother confronted him with this, he screamed at her and said he was still gay and didn’t want to deny it any more. Since then, their relationship has changed dramatically. He says they are now best friends. They share all their secrets, and he tells her about his boyfriends and affairs. Sasha is HIV-positive and still takes heroin. He works at a shop that sells electronic devices. He used to work with children. He loved them, but when his boss found out Sasha was gay, he fired him.
April 5, 2019. From left to right: Mitya, Yulia, Dima and Igor in the kitchen. The apartment belongs to Igor, who has just returned from another term in prison. They spend their days in the apartment, take drugs and drink.
April 6, 2019. Mitya meets up with his friends so they can get high at his apartment. Mitya lives with his mother. There is graffiti everywhere in the apartment; the kitchen is dirty. Mitya claims that his mother is mentally ill. She wears her nightgown all day and hides in her room when she hears Mitya and his friends approaching. The apartment belongs to her, and Mitya manages her pension.
April 6, 2019. Mitya and his friends take drugs in his mother’s apartment. The kitchen is filthy.
April 6, 2019. Olga helps her friend Mitya shoot up.
April 6, 2019. Nearly half the graves in this cemetery are for people born after 1975. Dima searches for the grave of his brother, who died at the age of 38. He bled to death after stabbing himself repeatedly with a knife while under the influence of drugs. Dima grew up with his grandparents; his parents died when he was still a child. He lives in the same apartment where his parents died and his brother killed himself. Dima is a social worker for an NGO that looks after drug addicts. Since the government does not approve of help for addicts, the NGO had to register as a foreign agency. This does not protect it from daily threats.
April 7, 2019. Yulia roams her neighbourhood in Togliatti. She is HIV-positive, has hepatitis and has had tuberculosis.
April 7, 2019. Olga (behind the curtain) used to take krokodil with her mother. She has three children from three different men. Her two girls live with the grandmother (left) of the eldest daughter. Olga lives with her new boyfriend and her 14-year-old son in a different apartment. Her son is a third-generation addict. He has not attended school for a year; he spends his days watching TV with the new boyfriend, who takes drugs and drinks. Their apartment is filthy and strewn with cat and dog excrement. There are cockroaches everywhere, and the kitchen reeks of krokodil. The school has not reported Olga’s son’s truancy: they want to maintain their statistics.
April 7, 2019. Yulia in her mother’s apartment. She has an 18-year-old son, who also lives with Yulia’s mother while Yulia spends her days in the drug apartment with Mitya. Yulia is HIVpositive and is addicted to many different drugs as well as alcohol. Her brother hanged himself on the roof, and most of her friends have died of drug-related causes. Yulia is convinced that she will be dead soon. When we asked whether we could bring her something the following day, she answered that she would like a pair of “fluffy slippers shaped like a cute animal”.
April 7, 2019. They call it the “church service for drug addicts”. The minister makes no bones about the fact that he was once an addict and spent several years in prison. He feels called to serve god and help others get clean. The congregation grows every week. The services are much more relaxed and cheerful than ordinary church services in Russia. Everyone is welcome. The venue is inviting and modern; it has an enormous sound system for the bands that play during the services. People dance, sing and pray as pictures of beautiful landscapes are projected onto the wall. Since Russians are no longer able to travel to Ukraine for rehabilitation, Russian drug addicts must rely on their own resources.
April 9, 2019. The stairway of a church-run rehab centre.
April 9, 2019. Mitya, Yulia’s boyfriend, has prepared speed in a light bulb to pass around and smoke. Mitya helps Yulia smoke. She once lost the sight in her left eye. After receiving a donated eye, she continued to take drugs and forgot to take her HIV medicine and the anti-rejection drugs for the new eye. She is again blind in her left eye, but refuses to go to the doctor. “I’m going to die soon anyway”, she says.
April 9, 2019. Children play in a Togliatti neighbourhood. Since the end of the 1990s, unemployment has steadily grown. The city’s criminal history and the current political situation have created the perfect environment for increasing drug abuse, HIV infections and early deaths. In Togliatti, every eighth 30-year-old man is HIV-positive.
April 10, 2019. Igor and his fifth child, born just a few days ago.
April 10, 2019. The centre for people with HIV in Togliatti, Russia. The building is in poor condition; the stairway has been sprayed with graffiti; used syringes lie all over the ground. People avoid being tested or treated for HIV there. They are afraid that they will lose their jobs after registering, or they see no reason for treatment in the first place. Svyata (shown) supports patients who have tested positive at her NGO. These people trust her more than they trust doctors or the government.
April 10, 2019. Konstantin was addicted to krokodil for decades. He used to take it with his wife. When their son was little, Konstantin and his wife overdosed. His wife died; Konstantin survived. The doctors had to amputate parts of his arm which had been rejected by his body after the injection. Konstantin says he was lucky: many doctors refuse to treat drug addicts. Some unnecessarily remove entire limbs or simply let the addicts die. After his wife’s death, Konstantin got clean and has never again taken synthetic drugs. His son is now a teenager, and Konstantin tries to keep him busy so that he does not come into contact with drugs.
April 11, 2019. Olga was a piano teacher until her drug addiction became incompatible with her work routine. She started taking heroin in the 1990s, when it became popular in Togliatti. She worked at the local car factory before it was closed down. Her daughter is proud of her because she thinks Olga is clean. However, Olga still takes heroin in secret whenever she can afford it. Her husband and most of her friends have died of drugrelated causes. Now she has a new circle of friends with whom she spends her days and takes drugs.
April 11, 2019. Drug dealers spray the names and hashtags of their websites on walls all over the city. Everything can be bought online. After contacting the dealer and placing an order, a customer pays digitally and receives a message with the precise coordinates and a photo of the place where the drugs will be hidden. The best hiding places are in the forests surrounding the city. It is not easy to identify the right tree.
On average, in Togliatti every eighth man around the age of 30 is HIV-positive. The Russian city of 700,000 inhabitants lies in Samara Oblast and became famous for its Lada factory. However, over the past decades it has been characterised by gang warfare, drug abuse and untimely deaths. The local phosphorus factory, which closed in 2003, was subject to theft for years as drug addicts stole the mineral in order to make the drug known as krokodil. Krokodil leads to death after a short period of use. The latest popular drug, speed, is much cheaper, easier and more discreet to make and consume. Companies that sell the ingredients required to make speed spray-paint the names and hashtags of their websites on walls all over town. Consumers buy and pay online. With this photo documentary, Tamina-Florentine Zuch has created an image of a city in its third generation of collapse, drug abuse and despair.
- Community
- Crisis
- Drugs
- Everyday Life
- Religion
- Russia
*1990 in Stuttgart, Germany
Tamina-Florentine Zuch works as a freelance photojournalist, videographer and author in Hamburg. She studied Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts and has worked as a staff photographer for Stern magazine. Zuch photographs her stories around the world, most recently in Iraq, Afghanistan and China. In 2016, she won the ZEISS Photography Award.
