Interview du photographe Sasha Maslov

Vendredi 15 janvier 2021, neuf jours après les évènements de 6 janvier 2021 qui ont vu des militants pro-Trump envahir le Capitole à Washington, les élèves de la classe de première, dans le cadre du cours d’éducation civique et morale, ont eu la chance de pouvoir interviewer un photographe qui a couvert pour son agence cet évènement : Sasha Maslov.

Cette rencontre est une belle opportunité pour les élèves du lycée Anne de Kiev, et a été possible grâce à l’investissement de leur enseignante Mme Revillon.

Les photographies sont ici reproduites avec l’autorisation de M. Maslov ; son travail est visible sur son site internet   et son compte Instagram.

Nous vous partageons ci-dessous le compte-rendu de l’interview réalisée en visioconférence et en anglais.

“Sasha Maslov is an American-Ukrainian portrait photographer, he currently lives in New York and works for an English agency. Last week, he was commissioned by this agency to cover the last rally of Donald Trump, actually, he had to cover the riot organised or improvised by a group of president’s supporters. 

The pictures above are a part of this testimony, you can watch his entire work on his personal website.

The class of 1ère for the civic education classes had the chance, yesterday, Friday 17th of January, to interview him about this specific project but also, more generally, about the political, social situation in the United States.

 His vision is really optimistic, hoping for the best with the new administration coming. 

Just to let you know about the main part, we wanted to sum up some of the key ideas of this talk. 

For him, the situation is not as bad as it could appear in the European media or in the traditional US media, that’s the reason why more and more US citizens try to find alternative media. 

Nael asked him if this riot could have an internal political impact, for Sasha Maslov, it could such as an increase in the safety precautions, the presence of policemen all over the country, accurate attention on all the movements. But for an external impact, Sasha confessed some doubts, for him, a new administration is coming which could normalize the relationships with the international community. 

We mentioned the fact that the FBI asked all the photographers who covered the scene to give the administration the pictures to identify the supporters and judge them..M.Maslov reminds us that usually journalists are not involved but he has absolutely no control in the pictures he took.

Matthieu questioned him about the risks he took to cover the story, Sasha answered he was prepared (he usually covers war scenes and had gas mask). he said that it was an unusual situation. usually, media try to stay away from the police…since Donald Trump’s administration, he explained that the crowd is clearly against media, creating a violent atmosphere.

We asked him to clarify the social portrait of Donald trump’s supporters: for him, it’s not only White supremacists, he also met people of colour, a lot of Chinese immigrants are for Trump or Cuban citizens. 

Théophile asked M. Maslov if he could understand the motivation of these supporters: Sasha insisted on the president’s charisma, the US society looks after a leader who was Trump. 

At last, Dan mentioned the hope and expectations with Joe Biden’s presidency. M. Maslov expressed his hope of a calmer life, just to live a normal life; he also mentioned his personal care about the environment and his expectations about protection. 

To conclude, he remains how impartial he tries to stay in his work, he just wants to leave a legacy about what happened.”