In Two Women in Their Time, award-winning documentary photographer Misha Friedman and New Yorker reporter Masha Gessen take us backstage, giving us an intimate look at this fiercely creative drama troop that officially cannot perform in its homeland, which remains a dictatorship in all but name. Two Women in Their Time is not only an astonishing series of photos documenting some of the theater troupe’s productions in New York; Gessen and Friedman also visit Minsk to meet Sveta and Nadya, the young lesbian couple who keep the place running. They live a life in the borderlands—between underground and public, between the closet and being out, in a country where same-sex sexual activity is legal yet remains taboo.

 
Misha Friedman is an award-winning documentary photographer who has worked for various NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières, in Uganda, Nigeria, India, and Darfur. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

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