Fiks, who is Jewish, describes the photos as a ‘kaddish’ for older generations of ‘Soviet gays’, but the tone of the show is more irreverent that funerial. Courtesy: the artist and Ugly Duckling PresseĬurrently on display at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Fiks’s show is comprised of photographs, taken in 2008, of Soviet-era gay cruising sites ( pleshkas, as they’re called in Russian). Yevgeniy Fiks, Sverdlov Square, mid 1930s – 1980s, ‘Moscow’, 2008, photograph. It never occurred to me that these moments alone in the Russian capital were missed opportunities for sexual encounters but, after seeing ‘Moscow: Gay Cruising Sites of the Soviet Capital, 1920s–1980s’, the new show from Russian-American artist Yevgeniy Fiks, I realize what a failure of imagination I had. It always struck me as odd when I was living in Moscow that, in a city of 12 million people, I had so many occasions to be alone – in metro underpasses late at night, in snow-covered courtyards, in the endless maze of backstreets and alleyways.