Courtesy of
Misha Maslennikov
Faces of Humanity Series
Misha Maslennikov
3rd
Misha Maslennikov was born in 1964 in the settlement of Dobroe close to Moscow. Since 2013 he has lived in the city of Odessa, Ukraine.
He studied at art school and obtained the qualification of architectural designer-constructor. Misha also studied at the theological department of Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University. He worked as a retoucher and the assistant head of the printing department at a design agency.
He began photographing around 2002 while traveling to the Russian North. The main areas are single expeditions to places difficult to access, visiting and co-operation with cenobites of active monasteries, sketes, with keepers of ancient temples, pogosts, studying the way of life of modern hermits, anchorites, and real intercourse and contact with backwoodsmen.
Since the middle of 2005 Misha has gone in for field reportage photography and has begun thinking seriously about the photographic process as a way of conveying author ideas in a missionary vein. In his series, he loves to show a comprehensive sacralization of the illuminated habitat, harmoniously integrated into internal space images to show the “truth of life”. Currently, Misha continues to focus on private and public projects in documentary photography. His photographs have been exhibited internationally in museums and private collections.
His photographs are in museums and private collections all over the world.
The Don Steppe
Senshin farm, village of Oblivskaya district, Rostov-on-Don region, Russia
2010 - 2012
Picture yourself in the midst of the steppe, somewhere out in the open, looking at the horizon. You find your gaze drawn beyond this meeting of earth and sky, to the far side of the visible, so much that you can see nothing other than this inexorable boundary. What’s out there? What kind of life beyond imagining? Perhaps something utterly different, utterly unknown: seas and mountains, the crystalline glint of office windows in concrete canyons, elegant shop windows, the fireplaces of ski lodges? Perhaps climbing the corporate ladder with its strict dress code, or beach volleyball in stylish bikinis? But you stand there for a while in silence, just a bit longer, and all this falls away. There is only the earth under your feet, near and far, as far as the eye can see, and the sky above your head, around you and about you, and it all runs together as one, even within you, and it’s as if there is no longer an observer. And you want to understand. You long to glimpse the sense of it, unravel the riddle of nature, in yourself and the creation around you, to suddenly grasp why you ended up here. There was something else…
Ah yes, it’s time to head home. You whistle to the dog, who’s tagged along for the walk, you gather the cut reeds from the ravine at the bend in the river for wattling and to repair the roof, you bring in water and firewood, and you water the garden. Then you fix the sagging fence of the livestock pen, you feed the chickens and the pigs, you meet the herd of cows coming in from pasture and urge them into the cowshed. What else? There’s never any lack of chores on the farm. Milk the cows, clean the fish, prepare the leavening for the bread. You don’t neglect the cats, but they would have been sure to remind you of themselves in any case.