Cheryomushki

Published — May 2025
Pages — 120 
Cover — Hardback, Tipped-on Image
Size — 240mm × 270mm

Nikolay Bakharev was born in the late 1940s in Soviet Siberia—a moment when artistic expression was strictly regulated. Orphaned at the age of four, he was placed in state care, where he first encountered photography after stumbling upon a plastic Smena camera.

In 1970, Bakharev was assigned to a job in a steel factory in Novokuznetsk, a Siberian city dominated by heavy industry. Soon after, he began working as a photographer for state-run Household Services, making official portraits in schools, factories, and public institutions.

As the Soviet Union began to unravel in the early 1980s, Bakharev turned to private portraiture. He traveled to near by river and lake beaches, such as Cheryomushk, where workers and families gathered to relax. These beaches were among the few public spaces in the USSR where any form of nudity was tolerated. “Almost any image of a naked body was considered pornography, which was against the law,” he says. Here, he created a deeply human archive of unvarnished Soviet life: intimate, unguarded portraits of people in moments of quite tenderness—parents embracing their children, couples pressed close, friends drinking in the afternoon light.

Bakharev’s camera served as means of connection. “There must be a mutual relationship,” he said. “They need to understand that I am not watching my sitters—it’s as if I’m part of the picture… A picture should not be beautiful, but interesting, then you can find beauty. Beauty is in the human relationships that are formed.”

Bakharev is also the author of Novokuznetsk published by STANLEY/BARKER in 2016, and has previously been nominated for Deutsche Börse photography prize for his 2011 exhibition at the Venice Biennale 

Text and images from publisher's website.