The man who changed the world's 80th
Earlier today, my sister and I saw a ridiculous amount of super expensive parked cars, security guards, guarding and fancy dressed people walking out of Albert Hall so we asked a traffic warden what was going on. Turned out it was Mikhail Gorbachev's 80th birthday and a number of celebrities (Sharon Stone, Kevin Spacey, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many more) were here to help blow out the candles. We were told the guests were about to make their way out from the main exit on the red carpet, so we decided to stick around and do some celebrity spotting and walked over to the front. On our way there we noticed a bunch of paparazzi gathered quietly by a back door. "Surely they're not sitting around here for nothing. They know something" we though, so after checking out the red carpet briefly, we returned to the back exit and I stood next to the them with my pocket point-and-shoot camera ready. Funny enough, I had my SLR with me, but the battery had just died a few minutes ago so I left if hanging on my shoulder. We didn't wait for long before all of a sudden security appeared out of nowhere to line up along the exit and the paparazzi charged forward as a familiar face stepped out of Albert Hall and into a shower of flash lights...
It was as if a long forgotten photo from my childhood came to life. It all came back to me...
... The fake animal footprints I used to draw in the snow, the cold classroom and the sloppy made-up stories I told her to get her attention, the store were I waited for my dad to pick me up after school, the big black scary ravens on the rubbish bins I chased away with snowballs when it was my turn to take out the trash, my best friend, the awesome hockey games, sitting waist deep in snow staring at my mother standing behind the hospital window with my newborn sister in her arms... USSR, more than 20 years ago. Just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Gorbachev made attempts to reform the country with his well known policies of perestroika and glasnost...
Trying to get through the paparazzi with my digicam was no easy task. Managed to get one sloppy shot as he walked into the car.
30 March 2011, London
It was as if a long forgotten photo from my childhood came to life. It all came back to me...
... The fake animal footprints I used to draw in the snow, the cold classroom and the sloppy made-up stories I told her to get her attention, the store were I waited for my dad to pick me up after school, the big black scary ravens on the rubbish bins I chased away with snowballs when it was my turn to take out the trash, my best friend, the awesome hockey games, sitting waist deep in snow staring at my mother standing behind the hospital window with my newborn sister in her arms... USSR, more than 20 years ago. Just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Gorbachev made attempts to reform the country with his well known policies of perestroika and glasnost...
Trying to get through the paparazzi with my digicam was no easy task. Managed to get one sloppy shot as he walked into the car.
30 March 2011, London
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