David Cohen (1)

I have always been deeply fascinated by Russia - a fascination that was no doubt inspired by the "Iron Curtain" and the closed society of the USSR; I'm a child of the Cold War, after all. But as interested as I was by the politics of it all (it was my major at university until the Berlin wall was pulled down and my advisor said "We need to re-evaluate.") what really fascinated me was the culture: the people, the art and the Arts. When everyone else had rock posters on their walls I had LeRoy Neiman's Mikhail Baryshnikov on mine.

This book is amongst the oldest in my collection, in terms of my ownership. Bought new, it's one of the few that moved with me every time over the the last 18 years, always treated with kid gloves and always given pride of place on my shelves. I took it off the shelf today to dust, and soon found myself curled up on my beanbag trying to juggle its large format without jostling Easter-cat as she tried to snooze on my lap.

The book is brilliant. The photos are brilliant. But what still chokes me up after almost 2 decades is what this book represented at the time; the unprecedented access, the struggle to create the book, the little vignettes the photographers told about their day and their experience. The cooperation between two societies taught through decades of propaganda to distrust each other.

The USSR is long gone now, but the book, I think, retains its relevancy, as a historical record of a country that no longer exists and an example of what's possible when politics are put aside. There are quite a few countries in this series and I am interested in acquiring A Day in the Life of America and A Day in the Life of Australia, but this is the one that's always going to retain pride of place on my shelves.… (meer)