Woman With Flag
4- 15.01.2019, 11:09
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A story of the famous photo.
In the new A Story Of One Photo column, Salidarnasts introduces you to a photo that touched feelings of thousands of Belarusians in the hot spring of 2006.
March 25, 2006. Ploshcha demonstration, which took place on Kastrychnitskaya Square for several days, had already been dispersed, hundreds of people were thrown into the detention facilities. But thousands of Belarusians gathered in the center of Minsk again. Nina Bahinskaya was among them.
Standing with a white-red-white flag in her hands in front of a police cordon with the cathedral in the background, she got into the shot that became the symbol of that spring. The shot that rocketed around the Internet and that have taken on a life of its own.
The now deceased political analyst Vital Silitski described Ploshcha-2006 as the beginning of the revolution of the spirit. As an attempt to an active minority to claim their rights to freedom and dignity. He noted the special role of national symbols in that confrontation. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why “a woman with a flag” gained such popularity.
This is what Yauhen Attcetski, the author of the photo, a Minsk photographer, a teacher of the photo school FSh1, says about the photo:
– I took this photo in 2006. It was Freedom Day – many people took to the festive procession on that day. At some point, I noticed an expressive woman with a flag in front of me. She was posing for a photo with someone from the passers-by having the cathedral on the background.
It all happened in just a few seconds: she began to turn around, the flag took the perfect position, all the people that didn't fit the idea of the scene managed to get out of the shot while the police and the cathedral became vivid in the background.
What was the fate of the heroine of the photo? Nina Bahinskaya continues to appear in the streets holding a flag. She can be seen in the column of demonstrators, among Kurapaty defenders, as well as on single pickets, to which the uncompromising activist comes with posters.
