Daily life in St Petersburg – in pictures
When British photographer Shelly Cornick moved to St Petersburg, she found herself woefully unprepared. Wearing only a thin winter coat and informed by a collection of vague stereotypes, she turned to her camera to interpret the alien landscape. The resulting photographs capture the resilience of daily life against a backdrop of brutalist architecture and fierce weather
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Looking up in a dvor on Vasilyevsky Island. The main streets of St Petersburg have arched entrances that lead to through to a warren of enclosed squares, or dvor, and passageways, which are one of the most characteristic features of the city. A stone’s throw from busy modern shopping centres, yet unchanged from Dostoyevsky’s description of them in Crime and Punishment, the dvor somehow stand outside time
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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Two girls sleep in the on the train from St Petersburg to Yaroslavl. The sidyachiy vagon, or sitting carriage, is designed for people making short trips between local stations, but some people, like the girls pictured, try to save money by travelling long distances in them.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A Soviet-era Volga sits in the snow on Sverdlovskaya Embankment.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A woman sweeps the entrance to the MusEros, a museum of eroticism, on Ligovsky Prospekt. Matryoshka or Russian Dolls are probably the most recognisable symbol of Russia, but despite being found by the thousand in every souvenir shop in the city, they are absent from Russian homes.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A dog jumps to see over the fence of a dacha (small country home) in Dno, a village four hours drive from St Petersburg. Most families in the city own a dacha that they can retreat to at weekends to grow food, rest and, in summer, escape the city heat.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A woman is caught in a snowstorm while taking a shortcut past the graffiti-covered garages that sit between Ligovsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Vosstaniya, two busy city centre streets.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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Two men stand outside a kiosk selling cigarettes on Marshala Tukhachevskogo in the residential district of Okhta. Recent changes in Russian law have seen a tightening on tobacco and alcohol sales, which has affected small kiosks that solely sell cigarettes most, as they are no longer allowed to display them in their windows - effectively forcing them to become boarded up.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A dog guards the entrance to a dacha in the village of Dno. Dachas were given to nearly all workers in the Soviet period, but today they can be bought for as much as five or six million roubles (£55,000-£65,000) depending on their location.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A woman can be seen walking through the corner of a Soviet-style star that has rusted away on the gates of a factory on Tulskaya Ulitsa
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A girl walks into a shop on Marshala Tukhachevskogo on an uncharacteristically hot day
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A father and son walk under an apartment block in falling snow on Shosse Revolutsi.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A man looks at his phone while waiting for the train to depart Moskovskiy railway station in St Petersburg.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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The remains of lunch in the restaurant car on the train from St Petersburg to Moldova.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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Two women walk along the bank of the canal on Ulitsa Nalichnaya in the district of Primorskaya, home to some of the city’s most classic brutalist architecture.
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A man exits a dvor into the light of Sovetskaya Line 8 in the centre of the city
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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A girl stands on the rooftop of a dvor behind Vladimirskaya metro station
Photograph: Shelly Cornick
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