"Infrastructures" by Maxim Sher & Sergey Novikov
Infrastructures is a research-based photo project about the Russian and post-Soviet political economy, created in 2016-2019 by Sergey Novikov and Max Sher. Using documentary and staged photography, as well as writing, they look at and reflect on the political and cultural significance of both the physical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, pipelines, etc., and 'infrastructure' of thinking and discourse that historically underpin the functioning of the State and power. The 360-page book consists of 50 chapters, each with photographs and an essay in English and Russian. By combining photographs and writing, Novikov and Sher also explore complex relationships and roles of photography and text within one body of work.
THE BOOK
Size 25.7 x 16.2 cm
76 photos + 50 essays in Russian and English
312 Pages
Published by RecurrentBooks, 2019
Offset printing Print run
Edition: 300
ISBN 978–5–600–00289–0
Sergey Novikov
Photographer, artist. The main topics of work are the economy and culture of the studied territories and communities, the mechanisms of their functioning. Photographic practice includes invasions of the urban landscape, the creation and reconstruction of visual marks of the present. Recent projects ZATO (2014-2016) and Grassroots (2012-2018) were exhibited in Russia and abroad, were shortlisted by Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles 2016, 2017, Photobookfest Moscow Dummy Award 2017, The Anamorphosis Prize 2016, Lucie Scholarship 2015. The author's works were published on the pages of Esquire Russia, Russian Reporter, The Moscow Times, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Wired, The Atlantic Cities, BuzzFeed, Dazed and Confused and others. Lives and works in Moscow.
Maxim Sher
Maxim Sher deals mainly with the topic of representing the post-Soviet cultural landscape and history, works with photography and video, makes installations, books and zines. The works were shown at personal and group exhibitions at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Architecture. Shchuseva, in the Triumph galleries, Calvert22, Mead, in the New Tretyakov Gallery, the Ekaterina Foundation, the Yeltsin Center, the Perm Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Photography, the Metenkov House, the Winery Factory, Zarya, etc. The author of books “A remote sounding barely audible evening waltz” (2013, Treemedia), “Palimpsesta” (2018, Ad Marginem), “245 entrance halls of the Khrushchevs” (2019, samizdat). How the photographer worked for Afisha, Big City, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Monocle, Bloomberg Businessweek and other publications.
The project was created with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Moscow