Teryoshin deliberately obscures the faces of the business men and women present as it is not his intention to fix blame on individuals. Thea nonymised arms dealers can be seen as a metaphor for a business operating in the shadows and under the radar of the media. His photographs are playful and often focus on bold graphic angles and visual humour such as drinks put down alongside machine guns and geopolitics tote bags. The casual nature of his observations combined with the bright innocent colour palette which runs throughout the imagery is a sinister contrast to the goods on sale. Teryoshin's use of flash helps him to highlight certain elements and is reminiscent crime scene photography. Teryoshin first began photographing all types of fairs-agriculture, pets, funerals-because his photography school in Dortmund, Germany was next door to a giant expo hall. In 2016 he ended up at a hunting fair-Hunt and dog-and was surprised how guns, in this instance hunting rifles, attracted old and young visitors. After publishing his series Sons and guns, he became curious to find out what happens at professional arms fairs. He first gained media access to Eastern Europe's biggest arms fair MSPO in Kielce, Poland in September 2016 due to his work for VICE Germany and the project began. Over a period of years he visited expositions in Poland, Belarus, South Korea, France, Germany, South Africa, China, UAE, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, USA and India.

About the Author
Based in Berlin, Nikita Teryoshin (*1986) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. When he was 13-years old he moved with his family to Dortmund, Germany where he went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. He graduated with his first long term project 'Hornless Heritage' (2014 - 2017) which focused on the matrix-like world of the German dairy cow industry. His project 'Nothing Personal - the back office of war' has been supported by the Stiftung Kulturwerk der VG Bildkunst, a PH Museum Grant and Volkart Stiftung. It has been exhibited in La Chambre Strassburg, France, Bienne Festival of Photography in Switzerland and at Cortona on the Move and PH Museum days in Bologna, Italy. His work has also been awarded the World Press Photo 2020 first prize in the Contemporary Issues category, nominated for the Picture of the Year, awarded the Miami Street Photography Festival 2019 first prize in Series, World Report Award first prize at Fotografia Etica (IT) 2020, and became Leica Oskar Barnack Finalist 2021. Teryoshin works freelance for publications such as SZ-Magazin, ZEITMagazin, The New Yorker, Der Spiegel and Stern and his personal projects have been published in VICE, Le Monde, ZEIT Magazin, GUP Magazine, It's Nice That, WIRED, Internazionale and Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin. He describes his genres as street, documentary and everyday horror and is a member of Burn My Eye photography collective.


Book Information
ISBN 9781915423221
Author Nikita Teryoshin
Format Hardback
Page Count 182
Imprint GOST Books
Publisher GOST Books