Russian photographers among the British Journal of Photography’s “Ones to watch”

Three Russian photographers are among the 25 “Ones to watch” listed by the British Journal of Photography. Olga Matveeva, Danila Tkachenko and Kirill Savchenkov were selected by the Journal team out of the 300 names of young photographers nominated by over 80 international photography experts, who put forward names of those who “are on the verge of something big”.

Singled out by the Journal as a photographer who “tears at his own heritage” with intensity, Moscow-based artist Savchenkov explores iconography, creating images which meld together architectural images of Moscow’s suburbs with his “angry, counter-cultural, skateboard-obsessed mates”. His Polaroid series Atlas creates an idealised picture of Soviet living quarters from the 1980s, with communist- and post-Soviet-era suburbs with their monolithic blocks of flats at the heart of his work.

For his series Escape, that won him first prize in the People Staged Portraits Stories category at the World Press Photo Contest last year, Tkachenko photographed men who live as hermits, withdrawn from society. The conflict between individual existence and the onward march of globalisation is a recurring theme throughout his work.

Matveeva’s collection takes on an explicitly political context. Moving to Crimea after graduating, Matveeva was inspired by the changes brought about by the political disturbances between Ukraine and Russia. Her photography project Feud came about as a result of “an unbearable loneliness during the war”, and was shot in Crimea over the course of a year from December 2013.