Control Refresh, book

Photobook by Toma Gerzha

Control Refresh documents the lives of young people in Russia, strongly influenced by tradition, social media, and politics. A Russian passport gave me access to remote cities in Russia over the past three years. I captured my peers living, dreaming, and enjoying themselves while surrounded by war propaganda.

My parents moved from Russia to the Netherlands in 2009. I grew up in Amsterdam but was surrounded by my family’s Soviet mentality and traditions. From an early age, I began documenting the differences between these two cultures to understand why I did not feel fully at home in either. Strongly connected to Generation Z peers, the focus of my research, I used the internet to escape.

Gen Z is the first generation to be born and raised in a digital environment. We cannot imagine a world without the internet. According to generational theory, there are many similarities between Gen Z and the Silent Generation, whose teenage years took place around the end of the Second World War, especially in the way they receive information. While our great-grandparents learned from books, we prefer a virtual world to the real one. The medium has changed, but the essence is similar: the replacement of lived experience with the experience of authors or creators. A phenomenon often cited as a reason for the loneliness of this generation and the underdevelopment of our personal communication skills.

These are difficult times for Russian Gen Z’s. They are afraid to speak out against the war. They see the military propaganda around them and fear being drafted to fight in Ukraine.

Control Refresh features a variety of photographs, captions, and a timeline of events from Russia’s recent history to provide context for the youth’s well-being.