Ukrainian/Russian photographer Igor Tereshkov flees Moscow
Photographer Igor Tereshkov was born in Ukraine and living in Russia. In 2019, his series Oil and Moss was exhibited at our festival Taxed to the Max. Recently, we received a message and photo from him, not from his previous residence of Moscow, but from Kazakhstan. Like many others, Igor had to decide to flee Russia. We cannot imagine what he and so many others are going through right now. We support them, wish all of them strength and hope for a swift end to Putin’s aggression. Like many others, Igor had to make the decision to flee Russia. We cannot imagine what he and so many others are going through right now. We support them, wish all of them strength and hope for a swift end to Putin's aggression.
Oil and Moss (2018)
Antonina Tevlina lives with her parents in the West Siberian village of Russkinskaya, near Surgut. They are Khanty, an indigenous nomadic people that roam the ancestral territory of about 600 hectares with their reindeer to provide for a living. For a number of years their existence has been threatened by the advancing oil industry. Leaking pipelines, pollution of rivers and lakes and the destruction of the ecosystem have led to a drastic reduction in the number of reindeer. “Yagel moss is like bread for the reindeer,” says Antonina Tevlina, “and if it is destroyed, it will take 30 years to recover.”
More than 50% of Russian oil production comes from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the district where the Khanty live. The licenses that are issued often extend across their territory. Local oil workers make jokes about the district, which is seen as one large oil extraction area. It is estimated that about 1.5 million tonnes of oil end up in the Russian environment every year, twice as much as during the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
For his ‘Oil and Moss’ series, shot on 35 mm film, Igor Tereshkov used liquid from oil spills to develop his film. Oil randomly destroys the gelatin in the film and distorts the image with holes and scratches, as a metaphor for the destruction of the Khanty territory caused by the oil pollution.
