Nothing Personal

Teryoshin deliberately obscures the faces of the business men and women present as it is not his intention to fix blame on individuals. Thea nonymised arms dealers can be seen as a metaphor for a business operating in the shadows and under the radar of the media. His photographs are playful and often focus on bold graphic angles and visual humour such as drinks put down alongside machine guns and geopolitics tote bags. The casual nature of his observations combined with the bright innocent colour palette which runs throughout the imagery is a sinister contrast to the goods on sale. Teryoshin’s use of flash helps him to highlight certain elements and is reminiscent crime scene photography. Teryoshin first began photographing all types of fairs—agriculture, pets, funerals—because his photography school in Dortmund, Germany was next door to a giant expo hall. In 2016 he ended up at a hunting fair—Hunt and dog—and was surprised how guns, in this instance hunting rifles, attracted old and