Valery Nistratov. Forest Steppe

FOREST STEPPE is a book of renowned documentary photographer Valery Nistratov. It finalises the artist’s 12-years long travels across Russia and former Soviet states in search for local identity of the uniquely vast territory and its people.

His discovery of the homeland has started in Mongolia. “That was Mongolia that provided me with a deep insight into Russia” – this paradoxical statement of the artist refers to Lev Goumilev’s phenomenological interpretation of Russia.

The routine life of ordinary people and their social environment is the focus of his artistic intentions. Nistratov explores the irrational within the everyday, believing that the objective reality is a sequence of human act.

“… Nistratov is preoccupied with the pagan mentality of the people settled on the vast expanses of Eurasia. Via the mystic and epic images of the provincial Russia he undertakes the journey towards himself. Babushkas sacrificing geese and burring the shrove-tide rag-dolls of Spring as well as other affecting pictures let us accompany the author in his journey deep into Russian and into the fascinating artistic personality of the photographer” – writes the art-critic Mikhail Sidlin.

Valery Nistratov was born in 1973 in Moscow and has been involved in photography since early childhood. In 1990 he started his career as a reporter in a local newspaper “For communism”, and kept on working as a photojournalist during the Soviet Union collapse for Western magazines. He was covering war conflicts in and outside the former USSR. In the end of 1993 he has revised his personal perception of photography and took the social documentary path.

Nistratov was published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, The New York Times, Dia Siete, NZZ, WOZ, Le Monde Diplomatic, OjoDePezand etc.