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. 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 ongoing project have been taken so far at sixteen defence fairs that took place in the five continents between 2016 and 2022 (Poland, Belarus, South Korea, Germany, France, South Africa, China, United Arab Emirates, USA, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and India).
Nikita Teryoshin (Russia, 1986) is based in Berlin but was raised in St. Petersburg until 2000, when he moved with his family to Dortmund, Germany. He describes his photographic genres as street, documentary, and everyday horror. With his long-term project Nothing Personal – the back-office of war, he explored the global arms trade for more than five years. The project has been internationally exhibited, winning the PhMuseum Grant 2019 and the World Press Photo 2020 first prize in the category Contemporary Issues among others. Teryoshin works as a freelance photographer for German publications such as SZ-Magazin and Der Spiegel. In 2020 he started pupupublishing, a publishing house for small editions of photobooks and zines.
From 23 September to 2 October 2022 the second edition of the PhMuseum Days photography festival will take place at DumBO space in Bologna, Italy. The event is curated and organized by PhMuseum, an incubator of photographic talents, with the aim of becoming one of the most interesting festivals on the European calendar while contributing to placing Bologna among the cities of reference for contemporary photography.
The chosen theme is Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow, intended as an opportunity to reflect on the powerful moment of change we are living through. The event will be a playground for professionals and a moment of discovery for those who want to get closer to photography and the visual arts. The program includes individual exhibitions, a collective installation, portfolio reviews, screenings, performances and a space dedicated to independent publishing.
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