foam magazine # 28 talent
How has your background in fashion and styling influenced the way you take pictures? Fashion tries to show beauty and desires to people at a particular time. The same idea is embedded in photography. If you have something to talk about or to show, it no longer matters which medium is chosen to present your ideas. It can be photography, video, music, or anything else. The main thing is to feel the moment. What do you hope to elicit in the viewer with your pictures? I always try to be honest. If I show some thing to a viewer then it’s something that I like, something that amazes me: a person, a place, a situation, or an event. You have to feel yourself being me while watching the images. What images do you surround yourself with? There is a lot of information around – the streets, people, the internet. So, one has to choose, to look for something that belongs to one, putting aside what is left over. I like travelling across Moscow on the under ground. You can find a lot of things, see interesting characters, get inspiration. Anyway, in the outside world I always look for something that is a part of the inner me. Everything I create is a part of me: my past, present, future – as I imagine them. So every work reveals me to some extent.
What attracts you in capturing the youth of your country? I really believe in my country, in its future. The current youth is a symbol. It’s the gen eration of hope. I can compare Russia, the country, to a teenager whose conscience is fresh, but genetic roots still show them selves. What attracts me is this combina tion of being open to everything new and at the same time being quite orthodox.
‘I always want to create my own world.’ interview by Anne-Celine Jaeger What does it mean to be young and Russian today? My country is located in this unique posi tion between the West and the East. Also, Russia has always had a special role in history. The future of the country, and probably the whole world, will depend on what this generation grows up to be like. If you are young in Russia you find your self in a state where you intuitively feel responsibility but at the same time you are afraid of it. It’s an attempt to cheat your self, to run away from yourself.
How does a seed idea develop into a project for you? The most important thing for me is to make wishes, aims and goals come true. To feel them, move towards them, make them come closer. When you know your goal and listen to yourself – everything happens of its own accord. I build eve rything on intuition and almost always see ‘my things’. When I make a choice I already know that the subject or thing is mine or at least it will bring me to where I need to ’be’. What is the single most inspiring thing you witnessed last year? My trip to Yalta, a place in the Crimea, Southern Ukraine. My graffiti artist friends live there. I will make a new project – a video about their life and about this unique area. In the summer it is a resort. In winter there is almost nobody there and my friends go into the abandoned and half-destroyed sanatoriums to paint and photograph there. This story will be very interesting for me to show. What are your plans for the rest of 2011? I am planning to spend the summer in St. Petersburg. I have an opportunity to finish my project about local skaters. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years already. It will result in a video and a book. We are building a pool in the centre of the city in a very interesting area called New Holland as well as a mini ramp at the beach on the Gulf of Finland. I think it will be fun. •
To what degree has the political and economic landscape of your country influenced your visual culture? Politics and economics do not affect my work too much. I mainly shoot in Russia, the people and places here. Having said that, the general contemporary cultural context does influence me. However, I always try to find something personal in what surrounds me. I always want to cre ate my own world. At the same time, I can’t imagine myself being anywhere else, being in a place that is not Russia.
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