Paparazzi Ethnography

In Moscow, we had breakfast with Citigroup energy analyst Alexander Korneev. The meeting was part of our effort to establish connections with financial analysts who determine market understandings and provide assessments of developing energy projects in Russia. Alexander creates assessments on the East Barents Sea offshore natural gas project called Shtokman, and we wanted to follow up with him on this topic.

It was also an opportunity for us to enter into the Citigroup Highrise located in downtown Moscow…

Alexander K. is frequently quoted in the press as you can read here. He is a spokesperson for determining the financial health of Russian oil and gas companies. Alexander K. is listed also as a co-author on a number of Citigroup insight reports concerning the timing of development on the Shtokman offshore arctic natural gas project.

We couldn’t help noticing our route to the Citigroup Building, and we want to take a moment and set the stage for how we arrived at breakfast. We took the subway as far as Mayakovskaya station, and then began wandering around the neighborhood, looking for Ulitsa Gasheka 6 (Гашека ул.), the very address for the Citigroup building. It was difficult for us to get our bearing coming out of the subway and while wandering the neighborhood, we decided to play a guessing game about which building would be the Citigroup.

In fact, the Citigroup appeared to us as an Island of Inland Empire, rising out of an older neighborhood in the mode of a brand new office center, all to its own, like an island of financial exception.

The following image, by the way, captures the external world of the everyday life that surrounds Alexander K. The buildings are some of the objects of representation that serve as the dominant in structuring the images that Alexander K. (as a financial analyst) has of himself, including his ideological relationship to the world and the principle behind his aesthetic orientation of himself to his surroundings.

For example, Alexander K. is aware that he holds an office in a building and that this awareness confronts him visually every morning upon his exit from the subway station. He is aware also that others can see this building as they leave the subway — as we do, for example, as we walk toward his building.

Thus, the field of vision belonging to Alexander K.– alongside and on the same plane with the self-consciousness he has of himself– also absorbs into it, the entire world of objects that surround him, and – in fact – the other fields of vision (e.g., us) who hold another point of view on the world, but whose point of view is now exposed to the visible reality of Alexander K’s world (e.g., the Citigroup Building we see from the subway station among other buildings).

One might say, following Mikhail Bahktin‘s description of the Hero in the novel of Fydor Doestoevsky, that: to the all-devouring consciousness of Alexander K., there is juxtaposed to this, a world of other consciousnesses that he encounters.  And he absorbs these other features and consciousnesses, which are rolled into his own material.

How does this occur? What consciousness will he now confront — Well, ours! and everything that we understand of him as we move through a set of visuals to visit him. What are these visuals that we absorb, and for which he will in turn be confronted with, which he already is aware of? Let’s look at the following visuals as expressions of power and distance:


Well, there’s the security turnstyles:

The visibility of titles of prestige:

Reception room of Alexander K. – notice the images posted on the wall…

“In power that may exist but is not visible in the appearance of the ruler the people do not believe. They must see in order to believe…. the most visible expression of this total focusing [on the] person and his elevation and distinction, is etiquette.” (Norbert Elias Court Society p. 118, emphasis added).

Here, what I want to draw attention to is the ritualistic visibility of the building itself, the titles of offices placed into the marble wall behind the security desk, the requirements for identifications badges to pass through the security turnstyles, what is important here, is: (1) objects within the field of vision and (2) the aesthetic distinction that this particular field of vision provides. As we move through this sequence, from (a) envisioning the building from the entrance of the subway, (b) the building’s visual amidst the neighborhood, (c) through security and recognizing the various company offices in proximity to Citigroup, (d) and finally arriving at Alexander’s reception desk, where we encounter, well, another set of visuals, about — buildings:


Images of power and history: A buiding within a building.















Reminders of where you are:




















The image actually has a descriptive in Russian and English:















Notice in these photos that hang on the wall of Citigroup reception, what we become witness to is a visual on the historical power of Citigroup as an expression of a building, an actual building in the past, that is brought to us in the present, as a visual expression of the permanance of capital, metropolitanism (New York and Madrid) and expanse across territories (the fact that these images are in Moscow).


Oh boy, okay, where shall we go for breakfast?


Citigroup on one side:





























Eatery on the other:

Audi parking in-between (compare with cars in previous gashenka street photo)

Architecturally, we have two new buildings that comprise this particular cityscape — from this perspective (which is the only perspective you see if you google Citigroup Moscow), what we find is a self-sufficient ideologically and structurally self-enclosed sphere.

What is required of us, is to leave the building, pass Starbucks, and enter into another entrance, that of a high-end eatery directly across this parking lot. No reference, assimilation or visual of the surrounding neighborhood.


Citigroup entrance:

…passing Starbucks…

Eatery entrance directly across from 6 Gasheka:

We have entrances of steel and glass, clean streets, even pavement–what we have here is a type of interior, with the only exposure to Moscow being the sky. It is a pose, similar very much so, to that of the galleria of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. (as seen in this image, taken while visiting the Energy Czar, Dan Kammen).

—  But there, the exposure to finance as composed by the World Bank building itself — reaches its zenith. In that building, it is a private public square without any interference from the city scape.












Okay, breakfast.

Buffet left, center and right

Vanguard and Rearguard
Knowledge-making surrounding energy development in Russia today consists of two contrasting social groups: a rear-guard made up of an older generation of specialists whose structural position as managers of organizations such as Gazprom and the government ministries is based upon accumulated political capital, that is, their built-up personal connections throughout their career, and; a vanguard or alternatively labeled the Global Russians (Globalnye Ruskie) – a phrase adopted at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum this past June, to identify a younger generation of Russians educated in the West and who are now serving as experts in Moscow either in the capacity as energy analysts, journalists, etc. for western firms (e.g., Citibank), or for newly created government entrepreneurial incubation parks. This vanguard group is further characterized by their reliance upon American economic discourses concerning relationships between capital expenditures, transparent reporting, and returns on investment.

Business card in English

Business card in Russian

Alexander K. clearly belongs in the latter group of vanguards.