This edition was published on the occasion of the exhibition "Aris Georgiou. America-Russia: Tie" organized by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank at the Cultural Center of Thessaloniki of MIET (February 7 to April 7, 2019), as part of the donation of Aris Georgiou's archive to ELIA/MIET.

The photographer writes about his journey to Russia: "... In 1998, at the age of forty-seven, I am no longer a novice in photography. Adequately tested, I now allow myself to welcome photography rather than seek it, to materialize it, to construct it. I practice it almost reflexively now. Having abandoned the mission to serve it, I have rather subordinated it to my own service. Its mission henceforth is to record circumstances and situations in which I, as a subject, am exposed."...

The "circumstances" thus led my steps to Russia in the spring of 1998, as they have to other places on other occasions; however, not to the vast country on either side of the Urals, a place that perhaps more than any other deserves to be explored in depth and history, and which has already been (and will continue to be in the future) the subject of many photographers or researchers of all kinds. My steps passed through just two iconic places of the former Soviet Union, "Holy Russia," the most expected ones: Moscow and St. Petersburg. And not even exhaustively. I would characterize my visit as almost superficial, to put it mildly.