Perekovka (reforging) is a Soviet concept of social engineering whose main purpose was to transform prisoners into conscious builders of the socialist regime. Behavioural corrections were carried out in Correctional Labour Camps. The Dmitrovsky Gulag (Dmitlag) was where the task of prisoners’ transformation through hard labour was accomplished exceedingly. The Dmitrovsky Gulag was one of the grand USSR establishments and became the largest complex of Correctional Labour Camps; according to various sources, around one million prisoners passed through its gates. A more precise number of its victims could not be determined due to the archive containing the records having been destroyed during World War II.

Dmitlag consisted of numerous separate camp sites running in chain along the roads as well as within the city of Moscow. Most of the work was done by the prisoners’ hands; construction equipment would appear far more frequently in propagandist reports and photos than actual construction sites.

Currently the Moscow Canal is not considered a memorial and many gravesites remain undiscovered. During my visits to the places related to the Canal and the Camps I trace the marks left by the past that signal lack of remembrance. My task was not to investigate and present new facts about the history but to bring attention to the fact of forgetting.

Alongside direct photography I use images taken from papers and magazines that were released strictly for internal, within-Camp distribution. The propagandist materials of those times acquire a whole new meaning now, revealing to us the potential of human devaluation that is customary to totalitarian regimes.