Winners

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This series of portrait-diptychs celebrates the winners of the All-Russian School Olympiad in Astronomy. Having won in the most prestigious intellectual competition and been photographed as winners, they are yet to be recognized.

‘When face to face you cannot see the face. The great is seen from a distance’.

Immediately after the results of the Olympiad were announced (at that potent moment, when any winner feels that any their goal is achievable) I used a flipped telescope with a film camera attached to its front lens to photograph those victorious children. By doing that I literally distanced those people from me, so that in the vastness of a 35mm film-frame they became lost minute spots.

Some time later in the scary emptiness of the photographic space amid dust, scratches and other imperfections of the physical medium I was looking for those talents using a microscope and photographically documenting my findings. And in those documents the found winners appeared as forming events of galactic scale.

Are these portraits of the future Noble prize winners, saviours of the Earth, businessmen, politician, artists, beggars? The answer to this question is veiled by the distance of time.

Dmitriy Tsarev from Moscow.
Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Dmitriy Tsarev from Moscow.
Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Ivan Kuzmin from Moscow.
Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Ivan Kuzmin from Moscow.
Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Evgeniy Boytsov from Moscow Region. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Evgeniy Boytsov from Moscow Region. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
The ABSOLUTE winner of the Olympiad: Ilya Chugunov from Saint Petersburg. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
The ABSOLUTE winner of the Olympiad: Ilya Chugunov from Saint Petersburg. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Evgeniy Chernatsky from Krasnoyarsk region.
Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Evgeniy Chernatsky from Krasnoyarsk region.
Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Ruslan Salimgareev from Moscow. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Ruslan Salimgareev from Moscow. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Pavel Arkhipov from Saint Petersburg. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Pavel Arkhipov from Saint Petersburg. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Denis Purytin from Saint Petersburg. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Denis Purytin from Saint Petersburg. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Alexey Shishkin from Mordovia. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Alexey Shishkin from Mordovia. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.
Ivan Kharichkin from Saint Petersburg is juxtoposed with the edge of the tremendous photographic cosmos. Full-scale portrait taken on film through a flipped telescope.
Ivan Kharichkin from Saint Petersburg is juxtoposed with the edge of the tremendous photographic cosmos. Close-up portrait taken on film through a microscope.