Marat Dilman

Russia’s Marina Istomina and Poland’s Ada Zielińska both break from the conventions of what is known as disaster photography. After experiencing first hand the wildfires engulfing her native Siberia summer after summer, Istomina captures the crisis through a redemptive fairytale: warning us about greed, power, and
ultimately the tricksters of the woods. The daughter of a firefighter, Zielińska, too, is fascinated with fire, specifically what it means to be a witness to catas- trophe. For her ongoing series, Post-Tourism, she travelled to four places: California during the 2018-19 wildfires, Paris shortly after the 2019 Notre Dame fire, Venice during the 2019 flood, and Australia during the 2020 bushfires. The Polish artist doesn’t err on the side of caution, often playing the role of pyromaniac and using chaos and provocation as fuel in her practice.

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Bogdan Shirokov trained his lens in fashion and editorial photography but has been working on what he calls a life-long personal project: looking at different facets of contemporary masculinity and queerness in Russia. For Shirokov, photography is first and foremost a type of refuge and a contemplative space for the viewer, one he physically expands with installation and sculpture.

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Marat Dilman offers a glimpse into nation-building in his native Kazakhstan, from the showpiece architecture to the robots being developed at universities. As the country readies itself for grand plans and ambitious advancements, the photographer reveals the way that folklore finds itself among the nuts and bolts of futuristic constructions.

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Past and present collide also in the work of Kincsõ Bede who interprets the stories passed down to her about communism. Less interested in the symbols from this time, Bede stages scenes and invents her own visual language to communicate the fears, desires, secrets, and paranoia which she inherited.