artek un été en Crimée

Claudine Doury
artek un été en Crimée

Photographs: Claudine Doury

Text: Christian Caujolle

Publisher: Editons La Martinière

104 pages

Year: 2004

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket, 23,7 x 26,9 cm, color photographs. Both the dust jacket and cover are in average condition due to stains and damages by water (see pictures). Inside in very good condition. RARE

"It is a fiction that has lasted for three quarters of a century, at once grandiose and derisory, sublime and nightmarish, and which, beyond history, invents its own time, its own rules, its rites and its dreams. A perfect place, then, to express the intensity of the adolescent emotions of the young men and women to whom Artek is devoted...

This is where it all began in 1925, with the creation of the Pioneer Republic. The fragile tents of the early days were replaced by permanent buildings and comfortable facilities, from canteens to dormitories, from gymnasiums to beautiful auditoriums. The thousands of deserving children have been replaced by the offspring of the new ruling class, the class of money and questionable wealth. But Artek remains an island out of time, where a unique form of 'liberal communism' has been established, where fake happiness is bought at a high price for children who, for a summer, will be able to live both outside real time and immerse themselves in a past they never knew and which projected an ideal world for them. Artek places teenagers in a space, in a time and in ways of functioning that detach them from reality, where they escape from contingency to let their doubts, their identity, their contradictions and their desires be expressed".

Christian Caujolle

- Extract from the foreword written by Christian Caujolle, translated from French.