Yana Paskova - Photojournalist, Writer, Photo Editor

INTRO

  • Walking through Washington Square Park in Manhattan, NY, on December 30, 2021, during a rapid surge in coronavirus cases caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
  • A masked butcher looks out of Biancardi Meats as a line of customers waits to pick up food outside in the Bronx, NY, on April 10, 2020. (Photo by Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)
  • A man adjusts his hat as he waits in line to get tested for coronavirus antibodies at the Refuah Health Center on April 24, 2020 in Spring Valley, NY. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)
  • A young girl peeks into the all-men's section during Tashlich, an ancient annual Jewish ritual to cast off one's sins into the water, here performed over the Williamsburg section of the East River in Brooklyn, New York on September 24, 2020. Women and men are separated by religious tradition during Orthodox Jewish holidays and prayer, but this separation can extend to the social spheres of the community as well. In public life — in politics, for example — female candidates are expected to adhere to entirely different standards than their male counterparts, such as never showing their faces in community newspaper ads, based on a tradition that directs men to shield their eyes from potentially improper images of women. (Photo by: Yana Paskova for The New York Times/the National Geographic Society)
  • Garden of Eden, Covid Era (through a Brooklyn window, June 2020.)
  • In a world that has paused its humans, humans reclaim the asphalt; a skateboarder soars above an emptied avenue in Brooklyn, NY on April 06, 2020.
  • Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's personal attorney, takes a call near the Loews Regency hotel on Park Ave on April 13, 2018 in New York City. Following FBI raids on his home, office and hotel room, the Department of Justice announced that they are placing him under criminal investigation. Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images
  • Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) greets the audience after speaking at a {quote}Bernie's Back{quote} rally at Queensbridge Park in Queens, NY, on October 19, 2019. The rally, at which Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) endorsed Sanders, drew over 20,000 participants and took place shortly after Sanders was hospitalized for a heart attack at the start of the month.(For Reuters)
  • Participants in the 2018 Women's March move through Manhattan, New York on January 20, 2018. The MeToo movement calls for equality in economic, physical, and mental health for women and draws attention to the widespread nature of discrimination, sexual harassment and assault against women across various vocations and life circumstances. It has gained geographical and cultural traction via women speaking out about their experiences.
  • The Visions In Motion dance group prepares to march down Eastern Parkway for the West Indian American Day Parade in celebration of the Caribbean Carnival on September 04, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images
  • Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Gates Foundation Inaugural Goalkeepers event on September 20, 2017 in New York City.Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images
  • Polar Bear Plunge participants run through the frigid waters surrounding Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY on January 01, 2018.Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images
  • (L-R) U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump (R-NY) arrives to Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, FL, on March 11, 2016, where former candidate Ben Carson gave him his endorsement; and U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) campaigns near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York on April 07, 2016.(Left image for TIME magazine, Right image for Washington Post)
  • U.S. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton (D-NY) rests for a moment while campaigning at the Clear Lake 4th of July Parade in Clear Lake, Iowa, on July 4, 2007. She brought along her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to greet the crowd.
  • An audience awaits Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA) to arrive to a rally at Byrne Electrical Specialists in Rockford, Michigan on Monday, February 27, 2012. (For The New York Times)
  • Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Gates Foundation Inaugural Goalkeepers event on September 20, 2017 in New York, NY.(For Getty Images)
  • (L-R) Actor John Voight peeks out behind the curtains, from which U.S. Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) is about to enter a rally with him and former FBI director Louis J. Freeh at the Fantasy of Flight museum in Polk City, Florida, on Sunday, January 20, 2008; and an American flag sits folded on a chair backstage as U.S. Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaks at the Bluegrass Cafe in Tama, Iowa, on Nov. 19, 2007. (Photo by: Yana Paskova for The New York Times)
  • This is my father's Army uniform (complete with a five-pointed star — the symbol of Communist rule,) worn during a mandatory two-year service in the Bulgarian military in the 1970s. It is superimposed with Cuban children wearing the uniform of Communist youth as they salute {quote}Votó!{quote} ({quote}S/he voted!{quote}) to citizens casting ballots for delegates to the country's unicameral parliament. Voting is not a mandatory activity in Cuba, but frowned upon if not exercised.Fraying family pictures from pre-1989 Bulgaria inspired this portion of a long-term project on Democracy + Communism. The parallels between them and photos I'd taken in present-day Cuba surface best when juxtaposed — one image layered on top of the other. And so, I attempt to bridge one country’s past to another country’s present — to show that political ideals, its profiteers and its victims, can remain unchanged by time or geography.
  • Hair dresser Pavlinka Paskova, 59, cuts the hair of Stanko Petrov Vulchev, 80, in Vidin, Bulgaria, on October 30th, 2014. Paskova says she has very few customers in this town of waning population: {quote}There's little hope of prosperity for the young here - they've all emigrated.{quote} Bulgaria has the most extreme population decline in the world — much due to post-1989 emigration, high death rates and low birth rates. There are so few people of child-bearing age in the nation that population statistics project a 30-percent decrease by 2060, from 7.2 million to just over 5 million.
  • Swimmers run into the ocean during Coney Island Polar Bear Club's New Year's Day Plunge on January 01, 2017 in Brooklyn, NY.
  • A woman sells geese from the trunk of her car, at an outdoor market in Vidin, Bulgaria on October 18th, 2014. Many Bulgarians sell personal belongings, fruit and vegetables grown at home, or resell goods as a supplement to their primary earnings, now that entrepreneurship is allowed in a post-Communism political environment.This photo is from a project that aims to gauge the effects of democracy in the former Soviet satellite nation Bulgaria, two and a half decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The story of democracy in Bulgaria at age 25 is a cautionary tale about transplanting one-size-fits-all Western values to a nation still undergoing social and economic upheaval. Bulgaria is still one of the poorest, most corrupt nations in the European Union, its post-1989 hopes wilted by political instability, high crime rates and skyrocketing inflation. While Bulgarians can now freely vote and protest without much threat to their freedom, their new oppressor is corruption - which is at a 15 year high, across political and civil sectors alike. The ennui is so casually etched on the passerby's face that it becomes routine - one that fits in sadly well against a startling backdrop of rotting architecture, joblessness, and a vast population decline. Despite what democracy has changed in Bulgaria, the daily struggles of its populace remain largely untouched, trapped in a post-communist time capsule.
  • My father, grandfather and grandmother pose for a picture taken while traveling on one of very few government-approved vacations during the isolation of the Communist years in Bulgaria. And Raymel Medina, 16, (center,) relaxes with friends after an evening dip in the water in the port city of Mariel, Cuba. He says he'd like to learn more about the world, but internet of limited and/or prohibitively expensive access makes this a challenge. Travel outside of the island is also forbidden to most, except to those with government connections, or whose jobs allow it. I remember being young and just as curious about the world beyond the vacuum of Bulgaria's tight borders during the Communist years. Fraying family pictures from pre-1989 Bulgaria inspired this portion of a long-term project on Democracy + Communism. The parallels between them and photos I'd taken in present-day Cuba surface best when juxtaposed — one image layered on top of the other. And so, I attempt to bridge one country’s past to another country’s present — to show that political ideals, its profiteers and its victims, can remain unchanged by time or geography.
  • A patient slams a Bulgarian coin on his forehead and says, “Money controls everything. Money is why I am here. Money is why I will never get out. We have no voice here; only money speaks,” in the psychiatry ward of a county hospital in Bulgaria on August 10, 2006.
  • Mitka, a 15-year-old Roma mother, holds her head in her hands while breast-feeding her daughter Ivanka in Bulgaria.
  • A female patient walks down the darkened, empty hallway in the psychiatry ward of a county hospital in Bulgaria on August 20, 2007.
  • INTRO
  • Visual Project Management | Grant Work
    • Ezras Nashim - Helping Women
    • Where Women Rule - Widows of Varanasi
    • The Power of Poo
    • Democracy + Communism
      • 1. Bulgaria: 25 Years After Democracy
      • 2. Cuba: Communism Relived
      • 3. Cuba + Bulgaria, in Layers
  • Image Editing + Design | Visual Research | Story Conceptualization
  • New Yorkers
    • Before Times
    • After Times
    • City Monochrome
  • People, in Portrait
  • Politics
    • U.S. Presidential Campaign Trails (in chronology)
    • Trump Gawkers
  • Travel
    • Liquid Rose Gold
    • Everywhere
    • On Red Soil
  • Fashion + The Arts
    • Fashion
    • The Arts
  • In Print
  • :: About me
  • :: Contact
  • :: Copyright Agreement

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