Where Is The Beauty Then? by Artem Nadyozhin
Normally it’s not the people or the story who inspire me. It’s the location. I’m crazy about abandoned, half-ruined, soviet-style buildings and interiors. This time was not an exception. I’ve spotted this balneotherapy center in my friend Roman’s Instagram, who is a location scout, and the roof windows and dried-out plants caught my attention. The same happened with the model: I did not know Alena before and just accidentally ran into her Instagram profile. The makeup artist Nina was also a random acquaintance few days before the shooting. Surprisingly it all came together and that’s always the most exciting part of the process. It feels like the whole image turned out to be a story of Alice in anti-Wonderland: the candy-like psychedelic makeup, the distorted proportions, the colors, they all make this impression. And to crown it all (sorry for the word play) was the Coronavirus lock-down which started around a week after the shooting. The isolation soviet hospital atmosphere in the pictures resonates well with the current context. Each image showing on the monitor while I was scanning the films was surprisingly relevant. Artem Nadyozhin
Model: Alena (@alain_ford)
Style: Yana (@wild_styled)
MUA: Nina (@_reamor)
Location: Roman (@romaroman)
Artem Nadyozhin (1984) was born in Sverdlovsk, Ukraine but raised in Pervomaysk. This small industrial city in Southern Ukraine used to be a huge enough missile center for Ukraine but after Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances took place in 1994, its fame has faded and the manufactures have closed. “I remember my childhood among tumbledown factories and abandoned quarries where we used to swim”, says Artem. “The weather was normally calm and foggy, so the landscape always seemed to be blurred. Maybe that’s where my photography style comes from.”