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Nouvelles Russes - Female, Russian and Rich by Paolo Woods
In Russia, as in the rest of the world, money has no scent. But it does have a sex… masculine. Since the break-up of the Soviet system, Russia has seen a class of businessmen, close to power, accumulate millions: the oligarchs. Oligarch, in Russian, is a masculine word.
But what of Russia’s women? The stereotypical image is of fawning girls around the oligarchs, very young and very pretty, renewable every six months. In Pavel Longuine’s film, ‘The New Russia’ an oligarch receives as a birthday present Miss Russia wrapped in cellophane on a silver platter.
And yet, in the new capitalist Russia, women have also made fortunes. They are less numerous than men, and their fortunes are smaller, but the phenomenon is sufficiently important to signify the emergence of a new class of ‘Nouvelles Russes.’ Photographer Paolo Woods and journalist Serge Michel have tracked down some of these exceptional, elusive, women, and propose a gallery of ten portraits.
