Opening of the exhibition and presentation of the photo album This Is Navalny by Evgeny Feldman
Arkisto, Event space, Helsinki
Dear friends,
As part of the opening of the exhibition "Unelmoijat vastaan robocopit" (Мечтатели против космонавтов) and the presentation of Evgeny Feldman’s new photo album This Is Navalny(Это Навальный), we invite you to a series of events with the author (in English) :
5.9 15:00 – Press preview (registration via [email protected])
6.9 september 15:00 – Opening of the exhibition Dreamers vs.Cosmonauts
6.9 september 16.00 Presentation of the album This Is Navalny
All events are free of charge. Donations are welcome.
The book and the album will also be available for purchase.
Venue: Arkisto (Uutiskatu 2, Helsinki)
About the Album
There are no staged shots in This Is Navalny, which is why we rarely see Alexei at rest. He is always in the middle of the action — which perfectly reflects what his political career was like.
Here is Navalny behind bars in a detention center for the first time; slipping out of his campaign headquarters to meet voters; energizing supporters at rallies; listening in despair to the sentence handed down to his brother. He’s wiping green antiseptic dye off his face and walking through the snow to the Central Election Commission — in the iconic images that went around the world. He’s embracing his wife Yulia in photos that had never been published before.
Evgeny Feldman photographed Alexei Navalny over the course of eleven years. He was physically very close to Navalny, yet remained independent. Thanks to this unique perspective — both involved and objective — Alexei appears remarkably authentic in every photo.
In the album’s foreword, Dasha Navalnaya writes:
“Thank you to Evgeny Feldman for being there and leaving us this memory. Some of these photographs have already become part of history, and others will become part of it. Thanks in part to Zhenya’s photos, many people know what Alexei Navalny was really like — cheerful, simple, open, very honest and very brave.”
About the Author
Evgeny Feldman is a photographer and photo editor, and one of the most well-known Russian documentary photographers. Born in 1991, he grew up and lived in Moscow. In January 2022, he left Russia for Latvia, fearing prosecution under anti-extremism laws.
From 2012 to 2016, he worked as a staff photographer at Novaya Gazeta. As a freelance photographer, he contributed to Mashable, Meduza, The Washington Post, and GQ Russia. From 2021 to 2025, he worked as a photographer and photo editor at Meduza; he now works on his own projects.
In 2017–2018, Feldman ran the independent photo project This Is Navalny, showing Navalny’s presidential campaign from the inside. Some of those photographs, along with dozens of others taken between 2011 and 2022, formed the basis of the album of the same name. Exhibitions based on the project have taken place in Melbourne, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris.
This Is Navalny is Feldman’s fourth photo book.
His first, Apart (2014/2015), about the revolution and war in Ukraine, was published first in Moscow and later in Kyiv.
The second, Super Tuesdays and Other Days of the Week (2017), focused on the 2016 U.S. elections.
The third, Spartak. Gold (2017), documented Moscow Spartak’s first national championship win in 16 years.
In 2018, Feldman launched the glossy samizdat magazine Svoy — the only Russian magazine dedicated to documentary photography — where he published his own photo essays as well as the work of other photographers.
In 2024, Feldman released his autobiography Dreamers vs. Cosmonauts, where he recounts in detail the historical events in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus that he witnessed and documented.
Organized by: Tochka.fi and Suomen venäjänkielisten demokraattinen yhteisö
[email protected]
Arkisto, Event space • Uutiskatu 2, 00240 Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
