It's 2014 and you're Vladimir Putin, the kind of strong, decisive, Cheneyesque leader America needs and Russia already has. It's gonna be a big year: There are countries to invade, gays to bash, malcontents to silence, dogs to slaughter, and civilian...

For the past several months, through a series of photographic portraits, I set out to explore the unique and often strange ways people in Russia think and feel about the motherland. I know, from growing up in the former Soviet Union and studying the region’s...