Raiding an Online Archive of Weird Russian Photographs

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Raiding an Online Archive of Weird Russian Photographs

Snooping around the back alleys of the web last month, I found myself in a Russian unsecured directory, where the residents of a region called Karelia back up all their files.

Snooping around the back alleys of the web last month, I found myself in a Russian unsecured directory, where the residents of a region called Karelia back up all their files. The directory is labeled as "public," which means that it is legal for anyone to get in, look at whatever users have uploaded, and download it.

It’s taken me one and a half months to go through the whole catalog—a large part of which is taken up by school coursework, pirated copies of Photoshop, and Russian soap operas—and the process has been tedious to say the least.

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However, occasionally I come across a whole lot of photographs—ranging from family shots to images of women doing strange things in barrels. To me, this insight into the lives of people who are completely unaware of my existence makes up for all the time spent browsing mountains of files.

More from Zachary at his website.