Based in Berlin, Nikita Teryoshin (*1986) was born in Leningrad, USSR. When he was 13-years old his family moved to Dortmund, Germany where he went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. His father was a painter and set designer at the theater and television. Visiting his dad’s working place, full of requisites and mysterious stuff, made a strong impression on Nikita.
Since then he remained interested in “backstages” set up by the media, industry or politics. Also the photographic research on the relationship between humans and animals is an big part of his work.
In 2008 during his studies after first discovering the work and irony of Elliott Erwitt, he became obsessed with documentary photography. He graduated with ‘Hornless Heritage’ (2014 – 2017), which focuses on the matrix-like world of the moderm dairy cows. “Animal Escape Plan” (2021) shows animals, who managed to escape the slaughter house and survive, to show them not as victims, but as heroes. His recent project “Life Sentence” deals with the artifical worlds of the Zoos. His main project ‘Nothing Personal’ (2016-2024) deals with the global arms trade. It won the World Press Photo 2020 and has been exhibited and published widely. In 2024 he published his first monograph ‘Nothing Personal – the back office of war’ with GOST books His clients a.o. are ZEIT, Stern, Spiegel, New Yorker, NYT, GQ, 11Freunde, Bloomberg, SZ, Le Monde.
Since 2020 he is also running his small own publisher pupupublishing.
He describes his genres as street, documentary and everyday horror is a member of Burn My Eye photography collective.