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Kolsky

by Tanya Sharapova

Photographs: Tanya Sharapova

Text: Andrei Zavadski

Publisher: Kult

96 pages

Pictures: 41 photographs and found material

ISBN: 978-91-990235-6-4

Price: 41.80 €

Comments: Clothbound, foiled hardcover Offset printing Size: 21 x 26 cm First edition of 500 copies Designed by Janne Riikonen and Tanya Sharapova

Tanya Sharapova’s debut book Kolsky is a photographic project about the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. Bordering Finland and Norway, Kola is a strategically important and heavily militarised region, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and major nuclear, military and industrial infrastructure. Fishing, oil, gas and mineral extraction are central to its economy, while its Soviet history has left a lasting mark on the region’s communities and environment.

Sharapova returned to the peninsula repeatedly from 2019 to 2024, witnessing a period of significant political and social change. Rather than presenting Kola simply as either a remote Arctic landscape or a symbol of contemporary Russia, Kolsky approaches it as a complex region shaped by overlapping historical and political forces. Through close relationships with the people she photographs, Sharapova allows her subjects to participate in shaping their own representations, creating images that move between the absurd, the unsettling and the intimate. Against the backdrop of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these images reflect the growing presence of propaganda, self-censorship and social pressure in everyday life, while personal expression and sexual freedom emerge as forms of resistance to the state’s increasingly rigid notion of “traditional values.”

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look inside

Kolsky

by Tanya Sharapova

Photographs: Tanya Sharapova

Text: Andrei Zavadski

Publisher: Kult

96 pages

Pictures: 41 photographs and found material

ISBN: 978-91-990235-6-4

Price: 41.80 €

Comments: Clothbound, foiled hardcover Offset printing Size: 21 x 26 cm First edition of 500 copies Designed by Janne Riikonen and Tanya Sharapova

Tanya Sharapova’s debut book Kolsky is a photographic project about the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. Bordering Finland and Norway, Kola is a strategically important and heavily militarised region, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and major nuclear, military and industrial infrastructure. Fishing, oil, gas and mineral extraction are central to its economy, while its Soviet history has left a lasting mark on the region’s communities and environment.

Sharapova returned to the peninsula repeatedly from 2019 to 2024, witnessing a period of significant political and social change. Rather than presenting Kola simply as either a remote Arctic landscape or a symbol of contemporary Russia, Kolsky approaches it as a complex region shaped by overlapping historical and political forces. Through close relationships with the people she photographs, Sharapova allows her subjects to participate in shaping their own representations, creating images that move between the absurd, the unsettling and the intimate. Against the backdrop of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these images reflect the growing presence of propaganda, self-censorship and social pressure in everyday life, while personal expression and sexual freedom emerge as forms of resistance to the state’s increasingly rigid notion of “traditional values.”

more books tagged »politics« | >> see all