Maximishin

Sergei Maximishin was born in 1964 in Kerch, since 1999 he has been the photographer of Izvestiya in St. Petersburg, since 2003 he has worked with the German Focus. His pictures have been published in several European and American magazines and has won more than one award each year.

“Is there anything like «Russian photo»?” – the readers of photographer.ru ask of Maximishin, to which he responds with the following anecdote:

Last year I photographed a flood in the Yakut region, together with dozens of photographers from the local newspapers. Almost everything they photographed was submitted to the Yakut news agency, expecting that someone would buy them. 98% of the hundreds of photos I have seen represented ruined houses, and the remaining 2% the same, but from a plane. And nobody had enough imagination to sit in the rescue boat, and shot, for example, how the people are sitting on the roofs of their houses while drinking tea or cooking soup. Nobody explained to these photographers that people are interested in people, not in houses.

The story is, of course, didactically bitter and unjust, but its ideal certainly highlights a very important characteristic of Russian photo. That it prefers to present absurd situations, and not merely for the sake of the joke, but to unwrap from them, with attention and affection, the humanity of the actors. As it is done by the best of Russian photographers. Including by Maximishin himself, in a masterly manner.

Chechnya

Tea party of  of the amateur theater circle of the St. Petersburg Psychological Clinic No. 7