Ilia Efimovich

Portraits in the Landscape

Ilia Yefimovich is a press photographer who worked in many trouble areas of the world and contributed to ITAR-TASS and Getty Images. The heroes of his Portraits in the Landscape project are girls serving in the Israeli army. While the reporter focuses on the event, on its association with certain circumstances, with some place and time, Yefimovich is interested in statics in this project: his landscapes are deliberately anonymous, they lack any action, and he draws all the attention of the viewer to the models which seem to display military style clothes in front of his camera.

The photographer calls himself an observer, and photography is the best means to make out what happens around him, from his point of view. «It is an everlasting chase, an adventure which often becomes a goal in itself, and not an object of my exploration. My attitude to the object of a photo shoot changes with time, just as I change, myself. Perhaps, the places and people I came into contact were a sort of bearing points for me. The project started at the moment when I began to shoot different landscapes that were interesting for me, using a panoramic camera. Going deeper into this work, I realized that the observation of environment is not enough for me, and I started to look for people, for personages who would represent it in the best possible way».

Ilia Yefimovich
Born in 1988 in Moscow, he lives and works in Russia and Israel. As a press photographer, he won a number of international awards (Israel, Germany, USA).
The personal exhibitions of Yefimovich were held at the Tavi Gallery (Tel Aviv, 2012) and the Israeli Culture Center (Moscow, 2010). He participated in the Silver Camera 2012 nominees’ exhibition (Moscow, 2013) and in the 3rd Moscow International Biennale of Young Art (2012).