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The artists nominated by
As a leading magazine on Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, it’s important for us on The Calvert Journal to show the rich culture and variety of creative output from these nations. When we were deciding the criteria for our emerging talents, we thought of those artists who are authentic to themselves, who challenge stereotypes and the photographic medium, who draw on fiction and mythology to show the fault lines of our fragile world, rebuild bridges with the past, or break from
societal expectations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bogdan Shirokov is a photographer based in Moscow. The main topic of his visual research is contemporary masculinity and the way it manifests in Russian society, especially among the youth generation.
He is committed to capturing the inner world of his subjects as well as creating a recognisable visual language to reflect softness, power and vulnerability. Bodgan's work has been featured in international publications such as 032c, I-D, Highsnobiety and Vogue and exhibited in numerous galleries in Moscow.
Kincső Bede (b. 1995) is a Romanian visual artist with Hungarian roots, who grew up in a small city in Transylvania, Romania. She is fascinated by the communist past of her homeland, the power of the leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, the control exercised by the security agency Securitate, and how this history is passed down across the generations. Currently, Kincsõ lives and works in Budapest, Hungary and she studies at the Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design. She is part of the Studio of Young Photographers.
In 2020 she won the photography scholarship of the Association of Hungarian Photographers. In the same year she was among the winners of Carte Blanche Students, a scholarship founded by Paris Photo, the world's greatest photo art fair. The works of the four winners were exhibited at the Parisian Gare du Nord. Her diploma series, entitled "Three Colours I Know in This World," was chosen for the 10 New Talent 2020 programme by the curators of BredaPhoto Festival and was exhibited in The Netherlands.
Her work is often applauded by the foreign press. Also her photos are part of the Blurring the Lines 2020 issue. From 2020 she is represented by TOBE Gallery, Budapest.
Born in 1990, a year before Kazakhstan became independent, photographer Marat Dilman’s signature blend of futurism and folklore is inspired by his country’s fast-changing visually hybrid landscape.
A self-taught photographer, he has built his creative practice by travelling around Kazakhstan and shooting uncanny, unpredictable vistas.
Marina Istomina (b. 1993, Ust-Kut, Irkutsk Oblast) is a visual artist working with studies of memory, trauma and particularly with traumatic experience. Her practice is often based on interviews and archives, embodied through visual images. In her projects she suggests her own narrative, combining different types of images – self portraits, archival images, staged and documentary photography, still lives.
In 2015 she graduated in Cultural Studies from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and in 2019 she completed the course Experiences of Contemporary Photography at Docdocdoc School of Contemporary Photography (St. Petersburg). Exhibitions include: In the N apartment, all tricks are taken seriously, ZGA Gallery, St. Petersburg (2019); MoS Photo Prize, Art of Omsk City Museum (2019); Young Artists That Oksana Budulak and Sanya Zakirov Liked This Winter, Ploshchad Mira Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk (2020); and Young Photographers of Russia 2020, Innovative Cultural Center, Kaluga; Exhibition Hall, Tula (2020), Assuming the Distance: Speculations, Fakes and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow). She is a winner of The Calvert Journal Makers of Siberia Special Jury Prize (2019), the New East Photo Prize (2020), and the competition Krakow Show OFF at Photography Month in Krakow (2021). She lives and works in Moscow.
