The Spine of Russia Journalists

Paul Richardson is a journalist, editor and publisher.  In 1990, he co-founded the publishing company Russian Information Services. The company is a doggedly resilient publisher of English language publications on Russia, creating original books and maps and publishing the 60-year-old magazine, Russian Life.

Richardson is author of Russia Survival Guide: Business & Travel (seven editions), three novels, and a humor book on running (Running is Flying, Rodale, 2012). He has written numerous articles on Russian history, culture and life published in Russian Life and elsewhere, and has  translated countless articles, short stories and longer works into English for both Russian Life and Chtenia, the company’s quarterly literary journal.

Over the past two and a half decades, he has edited over two-dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, including two books to win the national award for the best Russian -> English translation of the year: Ilf and Petrov’s classic novel, The Little Golden Calf, and Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s Moscow and Muscovites.

A graduate of Central College (Pella, IA), he received an MA (Political Science) and Russian Area Studies Certificate from Indiana University, Bloomington. In 1989 and 1990, Richardson was deputy general director at one of the first successful Soviet-Western joint ventures, a publishing company based in Moscow. For the past 25 years, he has traveled to Russia frequently and has consulted with a variety of companies on publishing in Russia, Russian business, and promoting Russia in the West. He is an experienced photographer and an inveterate runner.

Personal website

Mikhail Mordasov,  33, is a photojournalist. Born in Novgorod, he was educated as a lawyer. Yet, after taking up photography during his military service, he shifted his professional goals to photojournalism. Since 2009 he has been traveling throughout European Russia working as a documentary photographer, visiting both the region’s wealthy cities and its poor villages.

In recent years, he has devoted considerable attention to long-term photo projects. One involved documentation of how Sochi was modified to host the Olympic games in 2014. After the games, he traveled to Crimea, to capture the region’s transfer from Ukrainian to Russian control.

In 2014, Mordasov founded the Instagram account Everyday Russian Federation, which has over 100,000 followers. Each week, a new volunteer photographer puts their city or region (and its inhabitants) on display for the group’s followers. Contributors are free to express themselves, and each gives their take on Russian daily life without censorship and stereotypes.

Mordasov’s work has been published by dozens of local and international news outlets, magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post, NY Times, GEO, Spiegel, Le Monde, Newsweek, BBC, Russian Reporter, Ogonyok, Forbes, Expert, Kommersant, The Boston Globe, Les Echos, Berliner Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Presse, Reuters, AFP, AP, and others. He has participated in numerous photo exhibitions and won several photo awards, including the Sony World Photography Award, and the national contests “Sporting Russia” and “The Best Photographer.”

Personal website