Russia is well-known for its less-than-tolerant attitude toward the LGBT community. In 2013, Human Rights Watch described the country under President Vladimir Putin as having the "worst human-rights climate" in the post-Soviet era.
This makes photographer Misha Friedman's latest project, Lyudmila and Natasha: Russian Lives, all the more intimate. His photo series follows Lyudmila and Natasha, a lesbian couple living in Saint Petersburg, for an entire year, capturing all the minutiae of their relationship. The images of the couple are immediately relatable: eating takeout dinner on a couch, gentle embraces on a bed, working out at a gym, a night at a bar.
As Friedman puts it, "Love is everything. Without love, a person is dead. It's happiness, it's sorrow, it's laughter, it's tears."
He said his series offers a realistic look at a relationship facing a "hostile political climate, financial difficulties and often unstable living arrangements," and hopes that it will share a message of love, diversity and compassion.
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