Russia's Female Photographers Tell the Stories Behind Their Favorite Pictures Mar 08, 2018 - 11:45 am Jana Romanova, born in 1984, is based in St. Petersburg, Russia. After finishing a degree in journalism from St. Petersburg State University, she studied contemporary art at the PRO ARTE Foundation. In 2014, the British Journal of Photography included her in on its “Ones to Watch” list of promising photographers and in 2016 she was selected as a participant of Joop Swart Masterclass by the World Press Photo. In her work, Romanova focuses on notions of community and collective identity in post-Soviet countries. http://janaromanova.com Margo Ovcharenko “My favorite photo is titled ‘Expectation.’ The couple featured in the photo, Igor and Katerina, are close friends of mine. They were among the first to agree to let themselves be photographed while sleeping. Between 2009 and 2015 I took three photos of them: First, when Katerina was pregnant with her daughter Ulyana, then when she was expecting Ustina and finally, as shown in this photo, while pregnant with Angelina. What makes it extra special is that I am also Angelina’s godmother.” Jana Romanova Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki is a London-based photographer who was born in Moscow. Her work often focuses on human desire and she combines photography with video and sound. Her photos have been exhibited in Paris, London, Berlin and Moscow and she has been published by multiple photography and art magazines. yekate.com Personal Archive “An image by itself does not say much, it is part of the cacophony of ideas and the duplication of images, where quality is just an aspect of quantity. This photo has only one goal: to reflect the natural desire to look further and explore.” Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki Evgenia Arbugaeva graduated from the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program in New York in 2009 and has been working as a freelance photographer since. In her personal work, she often explores her home — the Arctic, discovering and capturing the remote worlds and people who inhabit them. She has received multiple awards, including the ICP Infinity Award 2015 and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Le Monde and National Geographic, among others. evgeniaarbugaeva.com Theodora Richter “I was born in the village of Tiksi, on the coast of the Laptev Sea in Yakutia. We moved when I was eight years old. But I returned 19 years later, when I was already a photographer. This photo is especially important to me: it shows the playground where I used to go as a child. When I came across it under a starry sky, with such surreal light, I was flooded with childhood memories which I thought I had long forgotten. At that moment, I decided I needed to slow down and explore those memories and document them.” Evgenia Arbugaeva Ksenia Yurkova is an artist from St. Petersburg, currently living and working in Helsinki. Her work, which combines photography with video and text, has been exhibited in Russia, Finland, Greece, Poland, Spain, Germany and Iceland. Her projects focus on language in all its forms — communication, memory, myths, stereotyping, the personal and the political — with its capacity to expand and rewrite meaning. kseniayurkova.com Yulia Lisnyak “This photo is from a series called ‘Habitat’ and is a homage to a famous installation. Taking into account the theme of this gallery, I have named it ‘Woman who flew into space from her room.’” Ksenia Yurkova Ksenia Zasetskaya, 22, is a Moscow-based photographer studying cinematography. With her photos she tries to “capture the moment,” observe people, play with light and surprise with the unexpected. www.instagram.com/xenichez Personal Archive “I took this photo in 2010. It was the last photo left on film, and the subject, my brother, really did not want to be photographed. When we picked up the prints, this photo immediately caught our eye. It was totally different from the others I had been taking until that moment and it filled me with inspiration.” Xenie Zasetskaya Anastasia Tsayder is a documentary photographer born in St. Petersburg. After finishing a degree in photojournalism, she moved to Moscow where she now focuses on documenting contemporary Russian culture and society. Her “Mzensk” project was among the finalists for the Kandinsky Prize. Her work has been published the Guardian, WIRED, Die Zeit, The Calvert Journal and Lensculture. “I’m interested in visually documenting the transformation we can see from a Soviet to post-Soviet society and further,” she says. tsayder.com Personal Archive “This is the first photo I made for my “Mzensk” series, a project about rural Russian interiors and village culture. I arrived at my grandmother’s home in the Kursk region after not having been there since my early childhood. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw its beauty and fairytale-like quality had been preserved just as I remembered. It was the start to a three-year project which brought me many new acquaintances and experiences.” Anastasia Tsayder Russia-born Nadia Sablin lives in the Hudson Valley, two hours from New York City. She has won several prizes including the Honickman Foundation Grant, the Firecracker Photographic Grant and the Puffin Foundation Grant. Her work has been published in The New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, The New Yorker, American Photo and the Financial Times among others. Her work investigates the relationship between documentary and fictional storytelling and explores the larger world through close personal narratives. Her ongoing projects are primarily based in rural Russia and Ukraine, spanning years of children growing up, elders growing old and the practical ways in which people cope with the passage of time in an unstable economic environment. nadiasablin.com Personal Archive “This is probably the most unexpected photo I ever took. I found Izzy and her mother Andrea who live in Phoenix on Craigslist. When I arrived to their home, there was no light there. Izzy refused to be photographed, and then refused to wear what Andrea and I had picked out for her, and ignored all of my questions. Andrea proposed to take his daughter out to the park to try to save the situation. Parks in the suburbs of Phoenix are usually barren and covered with gravel, cactuses and a lonely swing. Instead, we stumbled upon a grove. Izzy picked up a stick to drive away the flocks of mosquitoes, and I quickly clicked the shutter. The stick broke and she immediately asked to go home. When I developed the photo, I saw that in the tree behind her you can see the outlines of a face. It felt as if all the fantastical stories I had thought of before the shoot had escaped my mind and imprinted themselves onto the photo.” Nadia Sablin Ekaterina Anokhina is a visual artist working with photography who lives and works in Moscow. She studied social psychology at the Russian State University of Humanities and in 2013 graduated from Rodchenko Art School in Moscow. In 2014 Ekaterina won the International portfolio review at the Photovisa Photofestival in Krasnodar. Her work has been exhibited in Russia, France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Slovenia, Italy, and the U.S. Margo Ovcharenko “This is one of my favorite photos and it is also the cover of my book “25 weeks of winter.” I love its inexplicable magnetism: the subject of the photo is banal: flowers in a provincial town. But the photograph recasts them into a more dramatic and emotional role. They’re bright and restless and pull you in.” Ekaterina Anokhina Olga Ivanova, 37, never set out to be a photographer. “I still don’t feel like one,” she says. Her photos have been featured in the Guardian, Bloomberg, Telegraph, Le monde and others. “I’m interested in Russia and the people in Russia, I often travel into the regions and harass people on the street,” she says. olyaivanova.com Anna Block “This photograph is one of my favorites. It was taken in a village near Bologoye, in the Tver region. The girl is from a local dance group and she posed for me right before a performance for the local leadership. I like photographing people who seem bewildered by their fate. For that, you yourself need to be slightly out of sorts. Here, I think it worked.” Olga Ivanova Maria Slepkova got involved in photography while studying journalism in St. Petersburg. In 2015 she became a finalist in the “Young Russian Photographers” contest with her “Simple work” project. It has since been exhibited in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Italy. “But I haven’t decided what I’ll be when I grow up yet,” she jokes. Yuri Matveyev “One of my favorite photos is a portrait of the pianist Grigory Sokolov, taken during a rehearsal in the Big Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. He only performs in Russia once a year, and so it is always a big moment. He is a genius, one of the greatest pianists of our time. What you can’t see in the photo is that there are three Steinway pianos on stage. Sokolov picks his favorite from the three: he demands absolute perfection from sound. In one of his writings, Sokolov said that the qualities of a true artist, aside from talent, are honesty and goodness. ‘Genius and evil are incompatible,’ he wrote. Since then I’ve made it my credo.” Maria Slepkova More image galleries under water In Photos: Orenburg Flooding Peaks as 'Colossal' Waters Rise in Neighboring Regions As of Monday, around 40,000 homes in 193 Russian cities and towns have been submerged, while tens of thousands of people have been evacuated. 1 Min read hybrid invasion In Photos: 10 Years Ago, the War in Donbas Began Shortly after the annexation of Crimea, a group of fighters led by Russian military commander Igor Girkin joined pro-Russian separatist forces in the Donetsk... 1 Min read UZARA BAYRAM In Photos: 180K Muslims Celebrate End of Ramadan in Moscow The festival of Eid Al-Fitr, or “Uraza Bayram,” marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan in Islam. 1 Min read natural disaster In Photos: Russia's Orenburg Region Hit With Worst Flooding in Decades The Ural River overran its banks over the weekend in the town of Orsk, leaving the city submerged in water and forcing thousands from their homes. 1 Min read
Russia's Female Photographers Tell the Stories Behind Their Favorite Pictures Mar 08, 2018 - 11:45 am Jana Romanova, born in 1984, is based in St. Petersburg, Russia. After finishing a degree in journalism from St. Petersburg State University, she studied contemporary art at the PRO ARTE Foundation. In 2014, the British Journal of Photography included her in on its “Ones to Watch” list of promising photographers and in 2016 she was selected as a participant of Joop Swart Masterclass by the World Press Photo. In her work, Romanova focuses on notions of community and collective identity in post-Soviet countries. http://janaromanova.com Margo Ovcharenko “My favorite photo is titled ‘Expectation.’ The couple featured in the photo, Igor and Katerina, are close friends of mine. They were among the first to agree to let themselves be photographed while sleeping. Between 2009 and 2015 I took three photos of them: First, when Katerina was pregnant with her daughter Ulyana, then when she was expecting Ustina and finally, as shown in this photo, while pregnant with Angelina. What makes it extra special is that I am also Angelina’s godmother.” Jana Romanova Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki is a London-based photographer who was born in Moscow. Her work often focuses on human desire and she combines photography with video and sound. Her photos have been exhibited in Paris, London, Berlin and Moscow and she has been published by multiple photography and art magazines. yekate.com Personal Archive “An image by itself does not say much, it is part of the cacophony of ideas and the duplication of images, where quality is just an aspect of quantity. This photo has only one goal: to reflect the natural desire to look further and explore.” Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki Evgenia Arbugaeva graduated from the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program in New York in 2009 and has been working as a freelance photographer since. In her personal work, she often explores her home — the Arctic, discovering and capturing the remote worlds and people who inhabit them. She has received multiple awards, including the ICP Infinity Award 2015 and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Le Monde and National Geographic, among others. evgeniaarbugaeva.com Theodora Richter “I was born in the village of Tiksi, on the coast of the Laptev Sea in Yakutia. We moved when I was eight years old. But I returned 19 years later, when I was already a photographer. This photo is especially important to me: it shows the playground where I used to go as a child. When I came across it under a starry sky, with such surreal light, I was flooded with childhood memories which I thought I had long forgotten. At that moment, I decided I needed to slow down and explore those memories and document them.” Evgenia Arbugaeva Ksenia Yurkova is an artist from St. Petersburg, currently living and working in Helsinki. Her work, which combines photography with video and text, has been exhibited in Russia, Finland, Greece, Poland, Spain, Germany and Iceland. Her projects focus on language in all its forms — communication, memory, myths, stereotyping, the personal and the political — with its capacity to expand and rewrite meaning. kseniayurkova.com Yulia Lisnyak “This photo is from a series called ‘Habitat’ and is a homage to a famous installation. Taking into account the theme of this gallery, I have named it ‘Woman who flew into space from her room.’” Ksenia Yurkova Ksenia Zasetskaya, 22, is a Moscow-based photographer studying cinematography. With her photos she tries to “capture the moment,” observe people, play with light and surprise with the unexpected. www.instagram.com/xenichez Personal Archive “I took this photo in 2010. It was the last photo left on film, and the subject, my brother, really did not want to be photographed. When we picked up the prints, this photo immediately caught our eye. It was totally different from the others I had been taking until that moment and it filled me with inspiration.” Xenie Zasetskaya Anastasia Tsayder is a documentary photographer born in St. Petersburg. After finishing a degree in photojournalism, she moved to Moscow where she now focuses on documenting contemporary Russian culture and society. Her “Mzensk” project was among the finalists for the Kandinsky Prize. Her work has been published the Guardian, WIRED, Die Zeit, The Calvert Journal and Lensculture. “I’m interested in visually documenting the transformation we can see from a Soviet to post-Soviet society and further,” she says. tsayder.com Personal Archive “This is the first photo I made for my “Mzensk” series, a project about rural Russian interiors and village culture. I arrived at my grandmother’s home in the Kursk region after not having been there since my early childhood. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw its beauty and fairytale-like quality had been preserved just as I remembered. It was the start to a three-year project which brought me many new acquaintances and experiences.” Anastasia Tsayder Russia-born Nadia Sablin lives in the Hudson Valley, two hours from New York City. She has won several prizes including the Honickman Foundation Grant, the Firecracker Photographic Grant and the Puffin Foundation Grant. Her work has been published in The New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, The New Yorker, American Photo and the Financial Times among others. Her work investigates the relationship between documentary and fictional storytelling and explores the larger world through close personal narratives. Her ongoing projects are primarily based in rural Russia and Ukraine, spanning years of children growing up, elders growing old and the practical ways in which people cope with the passage of time in an unstable economic environment. nadiasablin.com Personal Archive “This is probably the most unexpected photo I ever took. I found Izzy and her mother Andrea who live in Phoenix on Craigslist. When I arrived to their home, there was no light there. Izzy refused to be photographed, and then refused to wear what Andrea and I had picked out for her, and ignored all of my questions. Andrea proposed to take his daughter out to the park to try to save the situation. Parks in the suburbs of Phoenix are usually barren and covered with gravel, cactuses and a lonely swing. Instead, we stumbled upon a grove. Izzy picked up a stick to drive away the flocks of mosquitoes, and I quickly clicked the shutter. The stick broke and she immediately asked to go home. When I developed the photo, I saw that in the tree behind her you can see the outlines of a face. It felt as if all the fantastical stories I had thought of before the shoot had escaped my mind and imprinted themselves onto the photo.” Nadia Sablin Ekaterina Anokhina is a visual artist working with photography who lives and works in Moscow. She studied social psychology at the Russian State University of Humanities and in 2013 graduated from Rodchenko Art School in Moscow. In 2014 Ekaterina won the International portfolio review at the Photovisa Photofestival in Krasnodar. Her work has been exhibited in Russia, France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Slovenia, Italy, and the U.S. Margo Ovcharenko “This is one of my favorite photos and it is also the cover of my book “25 weeks of winter.” I love its inexplicable magnetism: the subject of the photo is banal: flowers in a provincial town. But the photograph recasts them into a more dramatic and emotional role. They’re bright and restless and pull you in.” Ekaterina Anokhina Olga Ivanova, 37, never set out to be a photographer. “I still don’t feel like one,” she says. Her photos have been featured in the Guardian, Bloomberg, Telegraph, Le monde and others. “I’m interested in Russia and the people in Russia, I often travel into the regions and harass people on the street,” she says. olyaivanova.com Anna Block “This photograph is one of my favorites. It was taken in a village near Bologoye, in the Tver region. The girl is from a local dance group and she posed for me right before a performance for the local leadership. I like photographing people who seem bewildered by their fate. For that, you yourself need to be slightly out of sorts. Here, I think it worked.” Olga Ivanova Maria Slepkova got involved in photography while studying journalism in St. Petersburg. In 2015 she became a finalist in the “Young Russian Photographers” contest with her “Simple work” project. It has since been exhibited in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Italy. “But I haven’t decided what I’ll be when I grow up yet,” she jokes. Yuri Matveyev “One of my favorite photos is a portrait of the pianist Grigory Sokolov, taken during a rehearsal in the Big Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. He only performs in Russia once a year, and so it is always a big moment. He is a genius, one of the greatest pianists of our time. What you can’t see in the photo is that there are three Steinway pianos on stage. Sokolov picks his favorite from the three: he demands absolute perfection from sound. In one of his writings, Sokolov said that the qualities of a true artist, aside from talent, are honesty and goodness. ‘Genius and evil are incompatible,’ he wrote. Since then I’ve made it my credo.” Maria Slepkova
