The exhibition project “NORMCORE. Practices of Everyday Life in Contemporary Youth Photography” brings together ten young photographers.
Participants: Sergei Beryozkin (St Petersburg), Ilya Bolshakov (Nizhny Novgorod), Yana Bulgakova (Kazan), Viktor Zabuga (St Petersburg), Alexei Partola (Moscow), Daria Piskaryova (St Petersburg), Anton Seleznev (St Petersburg), Vladimir Stekachev (Moscow), Vladislav Tretyak (Kemerovo), Anastasia Chermanteyeva (Rostov-on-Don).
The title of the exhibition refers to a contemporary lifestyle characterized by the choice of unpretentious clothing and the desire to appear “ordinary,” not to stand out. In a broader sense, it points to a metamodernist approach in which artists emphasize relationality and the ability to focus on both their own and others’ inner experience.
People around the age of thirty are commonly referred to as millennials or Generation Y—those who grew up in the 1990s, came of age in the 2000s, and were shaped as adults in the 2010s. Now, in the 2020s, we can speak not only of this generation itself, but also of the cultural and social context of the era that it has created—directly or indirectly.
The rapid development of technology and communication tools; the emergence of creative communities and spaces; the chaotically shifting visual appearance of cities, where new and old realities coexist; alternating periods of economic crisis and stability; the endlessly refreshing stream of social media; and the blurring of boundaries between the real and the virtual — all of these factors have played a major role in shaping the worldview and ways of seeing of today’s thirty-year-olds.
These processes have become the ideal catalyst for the desire to capture and preserve the significance of every moment. Taking photographs, sharing them, and communicating through images have become integral parts of life and unmistakable markers of the era.
The postmodern perception of the world, with its irony, cynicism, and deconstruction, has ceased to correspond to an unstructured and constantly shifting reality. Today, what feels relevant are the search for universal truths, a pure sense of nostalgia, clear forms, a rejection of irony, and a desire to find genuine beauty in the everyday — qualities characteristic of metamodernism, a movement that reflects the cultural and artistic transformations of recent decades.
In the works presented in the exhibition, these tendencies are clearly visible, along with a movement toward beauty and an emphasis on an aesthetic way of seeing the world within seemingly mundane and trivial subjects. As a result, we are able to reassess these subjects anew and overcome their apparent banality. It is then that the everyday reveals a new sacrality. As Raoul Eshelman wrote in his essay on contemporary photography: “Everyday things are already infused with a higher form of order, and the photographer’s will coincides with this order. No irony — everything is beautiful because it has always been so.” Thus, visuality and the forms of aestheticizing reality become essential features of contemporary life.
The photographers participating in the project employ different approaches and address different themes, yet these captured “fragments of reality” are united by a common authorial vision based on a shared sense of inherent order, or the desire to create one. Their art becomes a way for young people to feel and understand themselves within the landscape of their everyday lives.
Each artist interprets classical, traditional subjects in their own way: the urban environment, nature, the portrait. In these works, the city appears both detached and dormant, and at the same time active and full of contrasts. The images of nature and the artists’ sense of themselves range from harmony and calm to tension and fear; the interior space of the home can be both intimate and alien, while everyday scenes appear lively yet also static, even monumental. A distinctive feature shared by all the works is their “imperfection,” which contains its own aesthetic coherence.
One of the fundamental principles of the new aesthetic is the significance of the atmosphere inherent in a work — an atmosphere that the viewer perceives and senses. The genres and subjects shape the structure of the exhibition, while the background color blocks group the works according to the atmosphere they evoke. We attempt to create a kind of visual tapestry that, on the one hand, complements the broader picture of the aesthetic and philosophical principles of metamodernism, and on the other hand, forms a photographic chronicle of an entire generation and its everyday life — a life that, in ten years’ time, will likely look entirely different.
(b. 1988, Pavlodar) — documentary photographer, working since 2007.
The main protagonists of Anton Seleznev’s work are the people around him. The photographer creates a collective portrait of the youth born in the 1990s — the generation to which he himself belongs.
Among the areas of his interest are graffiti and street-art photography. Over the past 15 years, he has also built an extensive archive of projects featuring Russian and international street artists.
Anton shoots both film and digital, drawing inspiration from global photojournalism.
Group exhibitions
(b. 1993, Kazan) — photographer.
In 2011, Yana moved to St Petersburg, where she graduated from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St Petersburg State University with a concentration in Film and Video.
She works primarily with analogue photography and uses the image as a way to explore themes of corporeality, death and memory, and national identity. Yana is also engaged in the study of film and photography theory.
Publications
FК Magazine (Latvia)
L'Oeil de la Photographie (France)
Dodho Magazine (Spain)
Yana Bulgakova’s works are represented in the “FotoDepartment” Gallery (St Petersburg).
(b. 1993, Rostov-on-Don) — interdisciplinary artist and photographer.
Anastasia graduated from the Academy of Architecture and Arts at the Southern Federal University and studied at the British Higher School of Art and Design. Since 2019, she has lived and worked in St Petersburg.
A significant stage in her artistic development was the independent study of analogue photography, which later became her primary artistic practice. In her work, she explores themes of memory, connection, and identity.
Group Exhibitions
(born 1990, Nyagan, Tyumen Region) is a street artist, tattoo artist, representative of the naïve painting movement, performer, and photographer. He lives and works in Saint Petersburg.
Viktor Zabuga’s camera captures figures from Saint Petersburg’s underground art scene. His photographs, true to an anarchic spirit, convey the romance and freedom of activists escaping conventions and the establishment. Another facet of Zabuga’s photographic reality is the urban environment and its elements: cityscapes, graffiti, and street landscapes.
Solo Exhibitions
Групповые выставки
(b. 1994, Kemerovo) — graphic designer and photographer.
In his artistic practice, Tretyak explores the environment and its elements, drawing inspiration from the nocturne aesthetics of cinema. In his works, decaying old buildings and cars are inseparable from the visual image of the Russian hinterland. Yet it is the liminal state of spaces — suspended between past and future — that interests the artist most, revealing beauty and meaning in the process of decline.
Rayonwave. A–Ya Society, St Petersburg, 2022
(b. 1988, Moscow) — filmmaker, artist, and photographer; founder of the self-published street art project V STOL and curator of the project DEMO016.
Vladimir Stekachev’s documentary films explore the life and experience of people in the post-Soviet era. His photographic work reflects his research practice in the field of street art, featuring urban environments, portraits of members of various subcultures, and elements of the socio-cultural landscape.
Filmography
(b. 1988, Gorky) — documentary photographer.
The artist places documentary authenticity at the forefront: there is not a single staged photograph in his body of work. Yet Bolshakov’s documentary approach is far from merely informational or journalistic — it leaves room for emotion and feeling. His photographs do not simply record reality; they carry the artist’s critical perspective on the world he explores.
Ilya has collaborated with many well-known publications and platforms, including Arzamas, National Geographic, The Calvert Journal, among others. In 2022, together with friends, he founded the community “Meet Nizhny,” where he regularly publishes various guides to Nizhny Novgorod and its surroundings.
Solo exhibitions
(b. 1986, Leningrad) — photographer.
Through photography, Sergey Berezyokin explores the urban environment, focusing on the relationship between people and space. In his work, the human figure is not the central subject but rather an element of the setting — a characteristic of the environment itself. Berezyokin is drawn to small, easily overlooked objects and scenes that reveal the multilayered nature of everyday reality, rather than landscapes or wide shots.
As the photographer notes, he is attracted to strange and subtle intersections of color, shape, and scale. When brought together within a single frame, these objects form abstract, chaotic compositions.
His artistic influences include photographic practices of the 1960s–1970s and the visual language of American cinema of the 1990s.
The Invisible. St. Petersburg A–Ya Society, 2022
(b. 1989, Leningrad) — photographer, graduate of the Docdocdoc School (program Experiments in Contemporary Photography).
The works of Daria Piskaryova are deep explorations of the states and energies of long-forgotten inanimate objects and their connection to nature.
The artist reflects on her practice in the following way:“Photography is a dialogue with myself through observation — a response to my surroundings and an attempt to find my own place among the endless interconnections of my native land, its nature, family, and memory. It is a hope to discover a point of support in nostalgia, and then within myself.”
The Nature of Things and Hopes. St. Petersburg A–Ya Society, 2023
(b. 1990, Riga) — fine art photographer, graphic designer, curator, and publisher.
Alexey Partola graduated from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and the British Higher School of Art and Design. His black-and-white photographs are characterized by compositional rigor and precise tonal control. In his work, the artist explores the motif of tunnels and passageways, which, in his view, hold a unique symbolic significance:
“When you immerse yourself completely in the metaphysics of the path, you begin to understand that this place resembles a limbo — a space where our familiar sense of time does not exist, a world without events. It becomes utterly irrelevant where this place is, where it leads, or how we got here. Looking more broadly, we inhabit it every day — individually and collectively, on the scale of humanity.”
City from the Underground. 0331с, Grisha, PRTL. Supported by Ruarts Foundation, Moscow, Russia, 2021
Last updated on 22.12.2025
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