In the waning days of Soviet Russia, its leader Mikhail Gorbachev made a last, desperate attempt to curb his nation’s rampant alcoholism through severe restrictions and a broad-reaching, exceptionally blunt advertising campaign. In appeals to health, common decency, emotional well-being, and labor production alike, the government begged its people to give up the bottle. It did not succeed.
B.A. Van Sise FRGS is a photographic artist, author, and curator, primarily focused on the intersection between language and the visual form. Previously a journalist for the Village Voice and Newsday, he is also the author of Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life: After the Holocaust, and On the National Language: the Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues with DeLanna Studi and Crisosto Apache.