PILGRIMS 1994-2015
For more than 600 years every 3rd of June thousands of orthodox pilgrims gather for the Religious procession in Velikoretskoye village. According to the legend, Nikolay Chudotvorets icon has been found in this very village and began to cure almost at once. Later, the icon was stored in Vyatka and, not to offend feelings of the believers, it had been decided to carry the icon every year with the procession to the place of its finding in Velikoretskoye village and then back to Vyatka. Within five days the pilgrims, praying and chanting walk about 130 kilometers. At the time of the Soviet Union the religious procession was officially forbidden, but pilgrims, hiding in woods from militia, made this way every year. From the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the ban was removed, and the quantity of pilgrims increased hundreds times. Now this is one of the most significant events in a religious life of Russia.
KOLODOZERO 2011-2015
On the shore of a lake lies Kolodozero, a small village made up of some dozen hamlets. Nestled between Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast, in north-west Russia, Kolodozero seems like most other Russian villages, on the face of it. A nursery and a school, despite dwindling class sizes, stand within the vicinity of the lake. Everyone gets by as best they can, working in lumbering, subsistence farming, fishing and hunting or collecting scrap metal to sell locally. The village is also home to a handful of people who decided to move there to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but they are very much the exception. Life in Kolodozero is not for the faint-hearted.
And yet, there is something special about Kolodozero. I visited the village for the first time in winter, on Christmas Eve. I suddenly felt like I was immersed in a tale—a tale that would completely absorb me. I made a promise to myself to return. And that I did in spring, summer, autumn and again in winter—several times over too—so that I could record the feelings and impressions I experienced throughout the seasons on film… I was captivated by the mentality of the local inhabitants, the local landscape and the charismatic Father Arkadi, an indulgent storyteller, who told me some fascinating local tales.
A small boat glides over a lake enshrouded in heavy evening mist… the distant wooden church spire points towards the sky and appears to be floating gently like a ghost… The lapping of the water, rustling blades of grass, and the wind move me in such a way that I can barely contain the feeling of joy within me. And then, in the blink of an eye, I realise I am home and I feel I understand where I come from…
Translate © Kit Young
VYATKA 1993-2013
Few of today’s black and white photographers have been endowed by the good Lord with the gift of seeing light as Alexei Myakishev sees it. His characters are shrouded in luminosity and glow from within as if their souls were revealed together with the photographs. The secret is simple, it is the author’s view, love intertwined with compas- sion for the people who by chance fall into the frame. All of the works by Vyatka-Moscow photographer Aleksey Myakishev are permeated by them. He left his hometown long ago but the relationship did not break, it remains deep, on the level of heart and soul.
It will take a little more time before the Vyatka of last century’s 90’s will be judged by the photos of Alexey which when gathered together in one album create an epic poem of Vyatka and of all the Vyatka and Kirov region. I am sure we will look closely into the faces, examine the clothing and household items in order to imagine or under- stand how people lived at the turn of the century.
For almost twenty years Alexey has been photographing the everyday life of or- dinary people; life in all its manifestations and simple topics. But in almost every one of his photographs there is something left unspoken, there is intrigue and nerve, and a special Vyatka intonation filled with irony. There is drama and details that speak, refer-ring the viewer to the paintings of the great chroniclers, the masters of the Golden Age of dutch painting, Jan Vermeer and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
We Viatka guys are sharp, we do not fall off the floor. We are brave people, seven for one, do not fear anyone. Witty fellows they drag the cow to the bath hut where the roof sprouts with grass as they just do not feel like mowing it. In Vyatka we do it our way. Vyatka country, the mother of all bounty, these and similar proverbs and sayings by the people of Vyatka are recalled when looking at Aleksey Myakishev’s pictures.
DUMP 2000-2001
The small town of Serov is located in the Northern Urals in Russia. There are two steel works in Serov but they can’t provide enough jobs for all. There is dump waste of production near the town where residents have to gather pieces of ferro-chrome. Most of them are teenagers. In their free time they go to the dump and collect the ferro-chrome to receive a little money for it. The world economic crisis has stopped a lot of steel plants in the Northern Urals and made living conditions very difficult in that region.
CHERNOBYL 2006
I went to Chernobyl in the year 2006. I went with a group of foreign journalists to do a photo story for the Finnish newspaper “Helsingin Sanomat”. It was one of the most impressive trips I ever had. For a short period of time we saw the station’s exterior and the new sarcophagus. And then we went to the ghost town of Pripyat. It was like time traveling, a 20 year jump back in time. The town remained like a reserve of a socialist past even though here and there one could see graffitis painted by german artists, but feelings of anxiety and tragedy did not leave me the whole time I was there. Surprisingly in the exclusion zone (30 km) there are people living. Mostly old folks who did not want to leave their homes. More information about the Chernobyl tragedy can be obtained from public sources on the internet.
MOSCOW 1999-2015
Moscow is a complex city for a photographer. It is always difficult to photograph the place where you live. Nevertheless sometimes i pick up my camera and go to the streets to capture the city’s pulse. When I look through the camera’s viewfinder a dialogue with the city takes place. There are lots of everything here, be it people, vehicles, buildings. Sometimes the city looks ugly to me, sometimes beautiful. Through photography I try to find something especial in this city, perceiving the underlying surrealism of what is going on.
ASYLUM 2011-2013
I first came to this place in the winter of 2010, at first I did not realize that the walls of the ancient Orthodox monastery were a psycho-neurological asylum. There are many of them in Russia, this one located near Kirillov is special. Once this was the cloister of the Nil Sorskiy Monastery, known and venerated saint in the land of Vologda, during the soviet era it was abolished just like many other churches and monasteries, and the monks were expelled from their quarters. In the 1930’s there was located a county jail, and later а home for the disabled. In 1961 the monk cubicles were converted into wards for the mentally ill. In 2006 domes and crosses were placed anew on top of the gate roof of the Intercession Church.There is an interesting story about the relics of Nil Sorskiy. During the dining room renovation, located within the monastery, under the old floor were found the remains of two people. After scientific analysis the remains were proved to be those of the saint.
TSKHINVAL 2008
The attempt by Georgian troops to seize Tskhinval provoked a war between South Ossetia and Georgia with Russia being dragged into the conflict. During the war hundreds of soldiers and civilians were killed on both sides. The city of Tskhinval was the most affected by bombings and air strikes, thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes. Later on Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but for the majority of the international community these countries remain disputed territories.
DAVYDOVO 2013
Davydovo village in the Yaroslavl region is basically an unremarkable village, but only at first glance. For the last eight years a summer camp for “special” children has taken place there. Father Vladimir, the rector of the Mother of God temple, believes that children diagnosed with autism and other mental disabilities live a very isolated life and they need to communicate and adapt to a natural environment. In the camp the children live with their parents and with volunteers. Necessities are provided for including small trailers for each family, showers, laundry room, three meals a day . The main idea of staying at the Davidovo summer camp is not just rest but rehabilitation through exercise, communication and creativity together with their peers as well as taking part in the sacraments of the Church – Confession and Communion.
MUSEUM 2012
This series of photographs was made especially for the exhibition Project “The Museum through the eyes of photographers” dedicated to the hundredth anniversary of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. I named this series as “peeking for the audience.” I was inspired by the museum visitors.
Photographing people in the museum, people who communicate with the works of art, what was interesting to me was to show how the faces transformed and became more spiritual. Of course the dialog exhibit-viewer was also interesting.
Moscow is a complex city for a photographer. It is always difficult to photograph the place where you live. Nevertheless sometimes a pick up my camera and go to the streets to capture the city’s pulse. When I look through the camera’s viewfinder a dialogue with the city takes place. There are lots of everything here, be it people, vehicles, buildings. Sometimes the city looks ugly to me, sometimes beautiful. Through photography I try to find something especial in this city, perceiving the underlying surrealism of what is going on.
TAIWAN 2012
I like to take pictures of people and what surrounds them. It does not matter where they are. The main thing is to love people and to respectfully relate to other cultures. This was my first trip to South-East Asia, everything was unusual to me. Something like landing in another planet, yes the same people, but they live differently. For example, it was a discovery for me that Taiwanese do not like swimming even though there are a lot of beautiful beaches, that they do not eat bread and love seafood, that Taipei is a city of scooters and that local people are very fond of foot massages. The first thing I wanted to see is how people live next to the ocean, to understand their relationship with this element – fishermen, marine life gatherers, market traders. I can not say that I got a complete story, because I mostly recorded my impressions of the country and the concrete places that I visited. But my main goal was to show how the ocean affects the lives of people.
MONASTERY 2011
The Donskoy Monastery is one of the most beautiful monasteries in Moscow. It was founded in 1551 on the site of the Crimean Khan defeat. At this place there was a small church, in which the icon of the Don Mother of God was located, later the monastery was named in Her honor. The cloister has a centuries long and complex history. During Soviet times in the monastery there was an anti-religious museum, later an architectural one. Only in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monastery was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. Within the monastery there are located a few churches and a graveyard where many prominent state and church figures are buried.
For more than 600 years every 3rd of June thousands of orthodox pilgrims gather for the Religious procession in Velikoretskoye village. According to the legend, Nikolay Chudotvorets icon has been found in this very village and began to cure almost at once. Later, the icon was stored in Vyatka and, not to offend feelings of the believers, it had been decided to carry the icon every year with the procession to the place of its finding in Velikoretskoye village and then back to Vyatka. Within five days the pilgrims, praying and chanting walk about 130 kilometers. At the time of the Soviet Union the religious procession was officially forbidden, but pilgrims, hiding in woods from militia, made this way every year. From the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the ban was removed, and the quantity of pilgrims increased hundreds times. Now this is one of the most significant events in a religious life of Russia.
KOLODOZERO 2011-2015
On the shore of a lake lies Kolodozero, a small village made up of some dozen hamlets. Nestled between Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast, in north-west Russia, Kolodozero seems like most other Russian villages, on the face of it. A nursery and a school, despite dwindling class sizes, stand within the vicinity of the lake. Everyone gets by as best they can, working in lumbering, subsistence farming, fishing and hunting or collecting scrap metal to sell locally. The village is also home to a handful of people who decided to move there to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but they are very much the exception. Life in Kolodozero is not for the faint-hearted.
And yet, there is something special about Kolodozero. I visited the village for the first time in winter, on Christmas Eve. I suddenly felt like I was immersed in a tale—a tale that would completely absorb me. I made a promise to myself to return. And that I did in spring, summer, autumn and again in winter—several times over too—so that I could record the feelings and impressions I experienced throughout the seasons on film… I was captivated by the mentality of the local inhabitants, the local landscape and the charismatic Father Arkadi, an indulgent storyteller, who told me some fascinating local tales.
A small boat glides over a lake enshrouded in heavy evening mist… the distant wooden church spire points towards the sky and appears to be floating gently like a ghost… The lapping of the water, rustling blades of grass, and the wind move me in such a way that I can barely contain the feeling of joy within me. And then, in the blink of an eye, I realise I am home and I feel I understand where I come from…
Translate © Kit Young
VYATKA 1993-2013
Few of today’s black and white photographers have been endowed by the good Lord with the gift of seeing light as Alexei Myakishev sees it. His characters are shrouded in luminosity and glow from within as if their souls were revealed together with the photographs. The secret is simple, it is the author’s view, love intertwined with compas- sion for the people who by chance fall into the frame. All of the works by Vyatka-Moscow photographer Aleksey Myakishev are permeated by them. He left his hometown long ago but the relationship did not break, it remains deep, on the level of heart and soul.
It will take a little more time before the Vyatka of last century’s 90’s will be judged by the photos of Alexey which when gathered together in one album create an epic poem of Vyatka and of all the Vyatka and Kirov region. I am sure we will look closely into the faces, examine the clothing and household items in order to imagine or under- stand how people lived at the turn of the century.
For almost twenty years Alexey has been photographing the everyday life of or- dinary people; life in all its manifestations and simple topics. But in almost every one of his photographs there is something left unspoken, there is intrigue and nerve, and a special Vyatka intonation filled with irony. There is drama and details that speak, refer-ring the viewer to the paintings of the great chroniclers, the masters of the Golden Age of dutch painting, Jan Vermeer and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
We Viatka guys are sharp, we do not fall off the floor. We are brave people, seven for one, do not fear anyone. Witty fellows they drag the cow to the bath hut where the roof sprouts with grass as they just do not feel like mowing it. In Vyatka we do it our way. Vyatka country, the mother of all bounty, these and similar proverbs and sayings by the people of Vyatka are recalled when looking at Aleksey Myakishev’s pictures.
DUMP 2000-2001
The small town of Serov is located in the Northern Urals in Russia. There are two steel works in Serov but they can’t provide enough jobs for all. There is dump waste of production near the town where residents have to gather pieces of ferro-chrome. Most of them are teenagers. In their free time they go to the dump and collect the ferro-chrome to receive a little money for it. The world economic crisis has stopped a lot of steel plants in the Northern Urals and made living conditions very difficult in that region.
CHERNOBYL 2006
I went to Chernobyl in the year 2006. I went with a group of foreign journalists to do a photo story for the Finnish newspaper “Helsingin Sanomat”. It was one of the most impressive trips I ever had. For a short period of time we saw the station’s exterior and the new sarcophagus. And then we went to the ghost town of Pripyat. It was like time traveling, a 20 year jump back in time. The town remained like a reserve of a socialist past even though here and there one could see graffitis painted by german artists, but feelings of anxiety and tragedy did not leave me the whole time I was there. Surprisingly in the exclusion zone (30 km) there are people living. Mostly old folks who did not want to leave their homes. More information about the Chernobyl tragedy can be obtained from public sources on the internet.
MOSCOW 1999-2015
Moscow is a complex city for a photographer. It is always difficult to photograph the place where you live. Nevertheless sometimes i pick up my camera and go to the streets to capture the city’s pulse. When I look through the camera’s viewfinder a dialogue with the city takes place. There are lots of everything here, be it people, vehicles, buildings. Sometimes the city looks ugly to me, sometimes beautiful. Through photography I try to find something especial in this city, perceiving the underlying surrealism of what is going on.
ASYLUM 2011-2013
I first came to this place in the winter of 2010, at first I did not realize that the walls of the ancient Orthodox monastery were a psycho-neurological asylum. There are many of them in Russia, this one located near Kirillov is special. Once this was the cloister of the Nil Sorskiy Monastery, known and venerated saint in the land of Vologda, during the soviet era it was abolished just like many other churches and monasteries, and the monks were expelled from their quarters. In the 1930’s there was located a county jail, and later а home for the disabled. In 1961 the monk cubicles were converted into wards for the mentally ill. In 2006 domes and crosses were placed anew on top of the gate roof of the Intercession Church.There is an interesting story about the relics of Nil Sorskiy. During the dining room renovation, located within the monastery, under the old floor were found the remains of two people. After scientific analysis the remains were proved to be those of the saint.
TSKHINVAL 2008
The attempt by Georgian troops to seize Tskhinval provoked a war between South Ossetia and Georgia with Russia being dragged into the conflict. During the war hundreds of soldiers and civilians were killed on both sides. The city of Tskhinval was the most affected by bombings and air strikes, thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes. Later on Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but for the majority of the international community these countries remain disputed territories.
DAVYDOVO 2013
Davydovo village in the Yaroslavl region is basically an unremarkable village, but only at first glance. For the last eight years a summer camp for “special” children has taken place there. Father Vladimir, the rector of the Mother of God temple, believes that children diagnosed with autism and other mental disabilities live a very isolated life and they need to communicate and adapt to a natural environment. In the camp the children live with their parents and with volunteers. Necessities are provided for including small trailers for each family, showers, laundry room, three meals a day . The main idea of staying at the Davidovo summer camp is not just rest but rehabilitation through exercise, communication and creativity together with their peers as well as taking part in the sacraments of the Church – Confession and Communion.
MUSEUM 2012
This series of photographs was made especially for the exhibition Project “The Museum through the eyes of photographers” dedicated to the hundredth anniversary of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. I named this series as “peeking for the audience.” I was inspired by the museum visitors.
Photographing people in the museum, people who communicate with the works of art, what was interesting to me was to show how the faces transformed and became more spiritual. Of course the dialog exhibit-viewer was also interesting.
Moscow is a complex city for a photographer. It is always difficult to photograph the place where you live. Nevertheless sometimes a pick up my camera and go to the streets to capture the city’s pulse. When I look through the camera’s viewfinder a dialogue with the city takes place. There are lots of everything here, be it people, vehicles, buildings. Sometimes the city looks ugly to me, sometimes beautiful. Through photography I try to find something especial in this city, perceiving the underlying surrealism of what is going on.
TAIWAN 2012
I like to take pictures of people and what surrounds them. It does not matter where they are. The main thing is to love people and to respectfully relate to other cultures. This was my first trip to South-East Asia, everything was unusual to me. Something like landing in another planet, yes the same people, but they live differently. For example, it was a discovery for me that Taiwanese do not like swimming even though there are a lot of beautiful beaches, that they do not eat bread and love seafood, that Taipei is a city of scooters and that local people are very fond of foot massages. The first thing I wanted to see is how people live next to the ocean, to understand their relationship with this element – fishermen, marine life gatherers, market traders. I can not say that I got a complete story, because I mostly recorded my impressions of the country and the concrete places that I visited. But my main goal was to show how the ocean affects the lives of people.
MONASTERY 2011
The Donskoy Monastery is one of the most beautiful monasteries in Moscow. It was founded in 1551 on the site of the Crimean Khan defeat. At this place there was a small church, in which the icon of the Don Mother of God was located, later the monastery was named in Her honor. The cloister has a centuries long and complex history. During Soviet times in the monastery there was an anti-religious museum, later an architectural one. Only in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monastery was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. Within the monastery there are located a few churches and a graveyard where many prominent state and church figures are buried.