Nikita Teryoshin

Based in Berlin, Nikita Teryoshin (*1986) describes his genres as street, documentary, and everyday horror.

Teryoshin graduated with his first long-term project Hornless Heritage (2014 – 2019) focused on the matrix-like world of the German dairy cow industry at the university of applied science in Dortmund.

Between 2016 and 2021, he visited 15 Defence Fairs in 14 countries on 5 continents for insight into the global arms trade for his story, ‘Nothing Personal – the back-office of war’. The project has been exhibited in Strasbourg, France, Biel, and Geneva in Switzerland and won the German VG Bild-Kunst research grant in 2018, PH Museum Grant 2019, Miami Street Photography Festival 2019 first prize in Series, Kolga Tbilisi in 2020 first prize in Documentary and the World Press Photo 2020 first prize in the category Contemporary Issues and has been nominated for the picture of the year.

His personal projects have been published in VICE, LFI, Le Monde, Vrij Nederland, ZEIT Magazin, GUP Magazine, WIRED, Revue Epic, Internazionale, and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.

In 2020, he started pupupublishing for small editions of photobooks and zines, with two publications so far: Carte des Vins and Backyard Diaries.

Every day on the news we are watching pictures of war and destruction, and the expenditure on armaments is setting new records year after year. Nothing Personal shows the back office of war, which is the complete opposite of a battlefield: an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger food, and shiny weapons. Dead bodies here are mannequins or pixels on screens of a huge number of simulators. Bazookas and machine guns are plugged into flat screens and war action is staged in an artificial environment in front of a tribune full of high-ranked guests, ministers, heads of states, generals, and traders.

The pictures of this project that is still ongoing have been taken so far at 14 defence exhibitions between 2016 and 2020 in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America (Poland, Belarus, South Korea, Germany, France, South Africa, China, United Arab Emirates, USA, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and India).