HERITAGE OF AN EMPIRE

WITNESSES OF THE TIME

[FROM LEGAСY OF AN EMPIRE BOOK]

Oleg Klimov witnessed the end of the Soviet regime. His personal development as a photographer also coincides with the perestroika and glasnost of the late ’80s, the fall of the Soviet Union and the reformations for the country following upon this.

Project Press Kit | Oleg Klimov

IT’S JUST A WAR

[THE POST-SOVIET WARS AND ETHNIC CONFLICTS]

Oleg Klimov hates the war and at same time can’t live without it. But he differs from typical pacifists described in books, as he is a pacifist with anarchist lifestyles — he belongs to reality

THE ORTHODOX FEDERATION

[MAGAZINE PHOTO PROJECT]

Oleg Klimov seeks the truth which he needs and which he wants others to understand. If some people want to wipe out the communist ideology and everything that has to do with it, he sets off to the Garden of Eden and seeks another ideology.

LIFE ON THE VOLGA RIVER

[PHOTO ESSAY FROM THE JOURNAL]

Oleg Klimov once received an assignment from NRC to shoot a photo essay for M Magazine titled Life on the Volga River. He bought a small yacht and spent the entire summer photographing along the river. He’s still shooting the project From the River to the Sea today...

IN LOVE WITH FOOTBALL

[PHOTO ESSAY]

Oleg Klimov believes that falling in love with football creates a strong, often lifelong bond — one that begins in childhood, in the backyard or on the school pitch, and stays with you into adulthood.

ALONG THE SHORES OF RUSSIA

[FROM PHOTO BOOK PROJECT]

After wars Klimov needs another distress just to put out the fire into himself and finds it on the water, filming stories along the shores of Russia.

CALAMITY ISLANDS

[FROM PHOTO BOOK PROJECT]

The photo book Calamity Islands contains historical and contemporary photographs, stories and opinions of island natives, collected by the documentary photographer Oleg Klimov over his several years at Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

Project Press Kit | Oleg Klimov

Buy the book CALAMITY ISLANDS

Independent documentary photography rarely survives in today’s media environment. Publishing books is not a commercial strategy — it is a necessity.

OUTCASTS

[FROM PHOTO BOOK PROJECT]

Oleg Klimov spent a total of three months in a residential psychoneurological institution (or, in Russian, a PNI). During that time, he took about 500 portraits of the PNI’s residents and learned about what life is like in some of Russia’s most closed-off, stigmatized institutions. Klimov stopped using knives and forks (only spoons were allowed in the PNI), saw a Russian Orthodox iconostasis stationed in a cafeteria, and made purchases from a store where no one ever uses cash (residents are never given their pensions in hand). While getting to know his neighbors and teaching them mathematics and photography, Klimov became convinced that the environment and the lifestyle available to any given person affects them at least as much as the individual traits they were born with.

Project Press Kit | Oleg Klimov