Kirill Kuletsky is a photographer from Russia based in London. In his images, the everyday acquires new meaning and poetry.
Kuletsky was born in Moscow but now lives and works in London. His work has been published in numerous magazines, including Esquire. Perhaps the most celebrated of his series isSpeleotherapy, which chronicles the salt mines in the Ukrainian village of Solotvyno, where an underground sanatorium for asthma patients operated for decades. Rather than revisiting that project here, we — the editors — would like to introduce some of Kuletsky's other photographs, which are no less worthy of attention.
Kuletsky photographs quiet, unremarkable everyday things that, in his hands, acquire meaning and a sense of belonging to art
Kuletsky photographs quiet, unremarkable everyday things that, in his hands, acquire meaning and a sense of belonging to art. In this piece, Losko looks at two of his series: People and Places and Imposition.
In his first series, People and Places, Kuletsky captures fleeting moments in the lives of strangers — sitting in a café, riding a train, or simply going about their day. The seemingly scattered, deserted spaces in these photographs nonetheless cohere into a shared mood and a single idea. Empty cafés, corridors and streets, occasionally inhabited by a solitary figure, create an atmosphere of melancholy and quiet contemplation. There is no overt emotion — neither in the images themselves nor on the faces of the people in them — yet emotion arises in the viewer all the same.
The second series discussed in this piece is Imposition, shot in the same style as People and Places. Here too the spaces are sparse, though more open. There are almost no interiors — instead, there is the expansiveness of wastelands and highways. A feeling of near-weightless sadness and calm pervades these works.
This brief survey of the photographer's work may well leave you wanting to explore further. In addition to Kuletsky's own website, his photographs can be found onInstagram, Tumblr orFlickr.
If these series have caught your interest, we suggest exploring other photographers whose style is close to Kuletsky's. Among them is the Hungarian photographer Bence Bakonyi, who captured a remarkably desertedChinese city. Or theseurban landscapes by Matthias Heidrich.
