Nothing Personal by Nikita Teryoshin

Nothing Personal

Nikita Teryoshin

Exhibition Details:

Nothing Personal shows the back office of war, which is the complete opposite of a battlefield: an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger food, and shiny weapons.

Every day on the news we are watching pictures of war and destruction, and the expenditure on armaments is setting new records year after year. But here dead bodies are mannequins or pixels on screens of many simulators. Bazookas and machine guns are plugged into flat screens and war action is staged in an artificial environment in front of a tribune full of high-ranked guests, ministers, heads of state, generals, and traders. The pictures of this still ongoing project have been taken so far at 16 defence exhibitions that took place in the 5 continents between 2016 and 2022 (Poland, Belarus, South Korea, Germany, France, South Africa, China, United Arab Emirates, USA, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and India).

Photographer's Bio:

(Russia, 1986) Teryoshin is based in Berlin but was raised in St. Petersburg until 2000, when he moved with his family to Dortmund, Germany. Here he also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. He describes his genres as street, documentary, and everyday horror. Teryoshin graduated with his first long-term project Hornless Heritage (2014 – 2019) focused on the matrix-like world of the German dairy cow industry. Between 2016 and 2021, he visited 15 Defence Fairs in 14 countries on 5 continents for insights into the global arms trade for his story, ‘Nothing Personal – the back-office of war’. The project has been exhibited in Strasbourg (France), Biel, and Geneva (Switzerland) and won the German VG Bild-Kunst research grant in 2018, PhMuseum Grant 2019, Miami Street Photography Festival 2019 first prize in Series, Kolga Tbilisi in 2020 first prize in Documentary and the World Press Photo 2020 first prize in the category Contemporary Issues and has been nominated for the picture of the year. In September 2019, he participated in the World Press Photo Foundation’s Joop Swart Masterclass, and started the series ‘I’ve never been to Russia’. Teryoshin works as freelance photographer for publications such as SZ-Magazin, ZEITMagazin, 11Freunde, Der Spiegel and Stern. His personal projects have been published in VICE, LFI, Le Monde, Vrij Nederland, ZEIT Magazin, GUP Magazine, WIRED, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 2020, he started Pulp Publishing for small editions of photobooks and zines, publishing three titles so far: Carte des Vins, Backyard Diaries and Animal Escape Plan.