Danila Tkachenko
Escape
September 1–October 2, 2016
“I am concerned about the issue of internal freedom in modern society: is it at all reachable, when you’re surrounded by social framework all the time? School, work, family - once in this cycle, you are a prisoner of your own position, and have to do what you're supposed to. You should be pragmatic and strong, or become an outcast or a lunatic. How to remain yourself in the midst of this?”
Danila Tkachenko’s series Escape is a revealing photographic study of multiple individuals who have chosen to leave organized society behind for the wilderness of Russia and Ukraine. The men pictured live in solitude in order to forget the troubles of their past lives and to avoid the conformity required to live with others. Alongside these evocative portraits, Tkachenko presents the dark, muted beauty of the natural environment and the varied forms of shelter these hermits have constructed for themselves within it.
Danila Tkachenko is a documentary photographer based in Moscow, Russia. He graduated in 2014 from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia and has since published and exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Tkachenko’s photographs have been shown at Kehrer Galerie in Berlin, Germany; the Tartu Art Museum in Estonia; Galleria del Cembalo, Rome; and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Escape, his first published monograph, was released by Peperoni Books in 2014.