It is not in the light we live – it is the endless dark with some rare, delusory like a dream, glimmers of light. And finding a beam of light here is a real science. The children — these winners of the All-Russian School Olympiad in Astronomy — took it up earlier than others. When their eyes had not yet got used to the dark. Our heroes seek stars. They are the stardust, which has just come to life and learnt to see, looking out, through a telescope, for a dead and blind one. Still, the question is, will these rising stars of humankind as they are succeeding in bringing some light into our empty and dark world? In thirty years, we will try to find our heroes and take new photos — as clear as possible this time. Which of them will manage to make it through the darkness of the adult world, and which will fail and fade out forever? Winners celebrates the winners of the All-Russian School Olympiad in Astronomy. Immediately after the results were announced, Ivanov used a flipped telescope with a film camera attached to its front lens to photograph the successful children. “I literally distanced those children from me, so that in the vastness of a 35mm film-frame they became lost minute spots,” he says. “After that I was looking for them on the negatives using a microscope and constantly documenting all my findings. And in those documents each winner appeared as an event of galactic scale.”

BIO

His practice revolves around the notions of the Heraclitean becoming, the Nietzschean will to power and the Burkean definitions of the sublime. His projects are questioning what it means to have become something in a constantly changing world. Education: BA (Hons) Photography, University of Hertfordshire Artistic Residency: Casa do Artista Jaime Isidoro, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal Awards: Photobookfest Dummy Award: honourable mention (2018) Creative Review Photography Annual: winner (2017) Photobookfest Dummy Award: shortlisted (2017) D&AD New Blood Awards: winner (2016) D&AD New Blood Awards: winner (2015) Solo exhibitions: “Winners”, Cosmos Pavilion at VDNH, Moscow, Russia (2019) “Winners”, Buksir gallery, Lipetsk, Russia (2019) “It’s a Trap!”, Ekaterina cultural foundation, Moscow, Russia (2019) Selected group exhibitions: XX Bienal de Cerveira, main program, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal (2018) Contrast-Construct, special program of the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow Russia (2018) The City to the Artists, the Artists to the City, Museum of Moscow, Moscow, Russia (2016)