Anastasia Khoroshilova
Biography
Khoroshilova first became involved in the tragedy in 2005, shortly after the hostage crisis. She had just finished her studies with Jörg Sasse at the Folkwang School in Essen (1999-2004) and decided to go to Bad Tölz in Bavaria, where some of the hostage children were undergoing a rehabilitation cure with their parents. This led to the series "Out of Context", in which the speechless and traumatised children were photographed against the serene mountain backdrop of the Bavarian Alps. The irony and fakeness of the traumatised children against the beautiful landscape was reinforced by the fact that the parents dressed their children in their best Sunday clothes they had brought with them.
For the series Russkie (Russians) (2007), Khoroshilova travelled through rural Russia and found "a world beyond all media excitement, fast mass consumption and virtual networking hysteria". The subjects themselves decided how they wanted to be portrayed and staged themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority, surrounded by their everyday objects and clearly visible in their clothing and details.
In this way, the photographer traces the reawakening multiculturalism of the multi-ethnic state of Russia. The result is photographs that overturn Western prejudices about "the Russians" as a homogeneous group.
Khoroshilova developed an interest in social and ethnographic photography at an early age, influenced by her own history. At the age of fifteen, the artist left Moscow for a boarding school in northern Germany. The experience of being different, of being foreign and, in addition, the specific isolation situation of the boarding school, sharpened her eye and interest for minorities.