Wasteland Photograph

Damir Davlatov was born in the tiny village of Irek in Bashkiria, where he spent the first years of his life there. When he was ten years old, inspired by the landscapes of Bashkirian fields, he became interested in photography. At first, he photographed nature and ordinary people, making light sketches of life on a сheap digital camera. Later he moved to Moscow and began studying photography with such cinematographers as Alexander Gurov, Vadim Semey and Alexander Grebenkin. At the same time, he took up photography professionally, trying to work in different genres and look for intersections in them. So, while shooting reportage projects, he sought to find in everyday life a drawing peculiar to cinema, inspired by the films of his favorite directors - Wong Kar Wai, Frances Ford Coppola, Guy Ritchie and Bernardo Bertollucci. In the staged projects, the inspiration came from thinking about everyday life and the feelings of a person from what is happening around. In 2014, he entered a film school in Moscow and graduated first from the directing department, and later from the cinematographer department. As a photographer, he participated in exhibitions in Italy, the USA and Russia, and in 2019 became the winner of TAI International Photo Contest (USA) Damir has shot and is shooting many of his staged works in collaboration with his girlfriend, Alexandra, jointly thinking over and implementing photo projects. They use all kinds of improvised materials – paints, polyethylene, flowers, dropper tubes, bird feathers, etc.. For each project, they create something new - starting from body art and ending with plaster casts of the face and original masks, trying to create images of their thoughts through form, material and setting. Now he lives and works in Georgia, Tbilisi, where he shoots his new projects, and also teaches photography.