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Utrish

Nikita Shokhov

Utrish is a small place near the Black sea, loc­ated around 20 km from Anapa in Krasnodar region in Rus­sia. It is a national park. In the early 60s it became one of the favor­ite resorts for nud­ists in Soviet Union  and has been wor­shiped ever since. Thou­sands of Rus­si­ans and Ukrain­i­ans come to Utrish every year. Here, far from civil­iz­a­tion they spend months of sum­mer. It feels like a state of its own: people live by the set of rules and orders they have developed them­selves. Air smells like can­nabis and free­dom and wel­comes every­one regard­less of their reli­gious beliefs and social status.