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- Collage, from the series “ı.|.ı 2022”
Poliakov Viacheslav
The Ukrainian cityscape is both depressingly fractured and vibrant. Colorful scraps of cheap plastic and fragments of past empires are scattered across drab concrete spaces in the most random ways. Objects from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, interwar Poland, and the Soviet Union blend with contemporary artifacts, forming a kaleidoscopic image—like the surface of an archaeological dig, or a glimpse into an open wound.
Viacheslav Poliakov began this series well before Russia’s war escalated into a full-scale invasion, but the torn bodies seen in today’s news seem eerily at home in the older photographs. “Now I know they’ve always been here,” he says.
Viacheslav Poliakov was born in 1986 in Kherson, Ukraine.
He earned a master’s degree in Art Education from Kherson State University. Based in Lviv since 2012, he works as a photographer, graphic designer, and instructor.
His practice blends documentary photography with design, focusing on urban environments and Soviet-era ruins. He published two photobooks, Backspaces (2018) and Lviv – God’s Will (2018), and has received notable awards such as the Foam Talents Prize (2017), and been a finalist at Vienna Photobook Festival, Krakow Photomonth Showoff, Lodz Grand Prix, and Prix Levallois.
His work has appeared in Foam Magazine, British Journal of Photography, GUP, LensCulture, and The Washington Post.