Kiev grunge: the photographer capturing timeless portraits of Ukrainian youth

Armen Parsadanov, who sadly died in February of this year, aought to create a personal portrait of Kiev’s emerging generation. His project Nutshell (2017) is a visual ode to community and connection; his subjects were all part of his extended family of friends and collaborators. At the same time, the images capture the spirit of the Ukrainian capital after the revolution of 2014. In the revolution’s wake, Kiev has seen the rise of a new wave in art and fashion. Yet Parsadanov’s portraits, monochrome and minimal, are deliberately free of architectural setting and context. Like any poignant documentation of a local scene, be it Nan Goldin’s Berlin or Robert Mapplethorpe’s New York, the work transcends the specifics of time and place, becoming a universal take on the fleeting nature of youth.