Volunteers in the service of good: the album of winners of the Presidential Library’s Contest “Foreign View. Freedom to Support” released

The Presidential Library has provided free photographs of participants in the “Foreign View” Annual International Photo Contest. Anyone is available the most interesting photographs of not only the winners, but also the participants of this contest.

In 2018, the contest was held for the ninth time. It was dedicated to the Year of the Volunteer in Russia and was held under the motto "Freedom to Support". More than 700 participants from 20 countries of the world submitted over 3200 photographs and almost fifty video works to the contest.  

The contest was held from April 27, 2018 to January 14, 2019. The results of the contest were summed up in February 2019 not by chance. The Presidential Library is located in the historic building of the Holy Synod. Here 160 years ago, in February 1859, the first photo exhibition in the Russian Empire was opened by a researcher, traveler, diplomat P. I. Sevastyanov, who during an expedition to Holy Mount Athos in Greece took pictures of Christian shrines, relics, church utensils. This was also a sort of the “foreign view”.

The participants through their works tried to draw attention to the social problems of the modern world. The winner of the contest in the main nomination - “Freedom to Support” was Russian Olga Kulaga. Her story opens with a photo album: a line of homeless people in a snow-covered area, pulling plastic bowls to a woman pouring hot soup from containers. She does it without pathos, carefully, adding a piece of bread to each serving.

The winner of the next nomination "Let’s Save the World”, Anna Antanayitite (Russia), captured on her contest’s photograph a green party of one of the activists of the movement: the guy points to a poster that says “Think What You Breathe”. This is a message to all of us, residents of large cities and villages lost in the outback: be careful with nature, think more about the future of the planet!

A photograph of the reportage plan with students of the construction team, crowding in the train hall is very nice, - the train is going to the East, to one of the Siberian construction projects, where young hands are so necessary. This photograph does not have an author, it was sent to the contest from the State Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan.

A series of photographs of the winner of the contest Maxim Anshin is dedicated to people with disabilities and their voluntary assistants. Difficult emotions overwhelm the main actors trying to dance or measure themselves by the strength of their hands while sitting in a wheelchair.

And of course, in the year of the 2018 World Cup in St. Petersburg, the “Foreign View” Contest could not bypass the topic of football and volunteers who helped fans who came from all over the world. The winner in “The Victory Ball” nomination was a photograph depicting not the decisive moment of the match of professional athletes, but the training of beginners in the gym.

Sergei Kulikov won the nomination “Russia through the eyes of the Germans” to take part in the contest and had success - his Russian-German dialogue on the bridge, when a smartphone acts as a translator and has become an amusing genre scene.

The nomination "Presidential Library’s specialists" completes a series of nominations: closely embracing, the volunteers from different countries - beautiful, promising young people who have gone through school to help others, will surely find their place in this life...

There are practically no boundaries for volunteering, everyone can find their own business and spend time and energy to benefit society. The main task of the contest is to tell about people who do good without disinterestedness, without demanding anything in return.