© Misha Friedman, Tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union

#1: no further information available
#2: Uzbekistan: A room for five male patients with multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB, in a tuberculosis hospital in Nukus

Misha Friedman’s photographs of tuberculosis are dark, black-and-white glimpses of passing lives. In many of the frames — shot in Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Russia — there is a wandering, ghostly presence. The visual conceit is apt.

“Most of the people you see here are dead,” Mr. Friedman said last week, looking through the photographs. “My images have not really helped them. Maybe they’ll help people in the future. Maybe they’ll help with fund-raising here and there. But to these particular people, they did not help. So that part is harder, being kind of just a photographer.”

See more of Misha Friedman’s photography here.

(read more here and here)