Exchanged emails with Michal Chelbin this evening. Found Chelbin’s work thanks to the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Photography Prize. These images from the “Strangely Familiar” series shot in Ukraine. “Most of the people I photograph have something in common; they are not the mainstream, and many of them are small town performers (For example, they could be dwarfs in a theatre play, ball room dancers or young contortionists). I try to photograph my subjects dislocated from their performing environment and set in casual settings, off stage: at home, on the street or in a park. Some of them with their costumes and others wear everyday clothes.”
