Karat. Sky over St. Petersburg

Photographs and interviews tell the stories of children and youths in the Russian city with over four million inhabitants who live often on roofs an attics, five or six floors above the city's streets where they hope to find a kind of home. Here they sleep, here they can take drugs without being apprehended and here, too, they make money from prostitution. "Karat" is a brand name of a shoe polish containing solvents that many of them inhale. During 2000 and 2001 I spent totally 9 months in St. Petersburg to get the pictures for the later photo book - "Karat. Sky over St. Petersburg".