From the Nailya Alexander Gallery
Evgeny Mokhorev was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1967. A childhood interest in photography led him to join the famous Leningrad photo club “Mirror” and to pursue a career as a professional photographer. Since the late 1980s, Mokhorev has explored the territories of childhood and adolescence and the transition to adulthood. In 1992, he showed his series “Games Children Play” during the Mois de la Photo festival in Paris, his first solo exhibition outside of the Soviet Union.
Transformer of Innocence, Evgeny Mokhorev and the Young in the City
Young adulthood encompasses an important and universal experience and provides extensive parallels for the adult world. If art confined itself solely to the exploration of maturity, it would abdicate the opportunity to investigate innocence, change, risk, wonder, power, example, danger, honesty, simplicity, purity, cynicism, growth, and by implication responsibilities and parenthood, wich are all inescapably linked to the nature of adolescence.
In some circles, his focus on youth or sexual ambiguity will be seen as too provocative. In truth, however, it is a provocation (if at all) that compels us more forcefully to confront difficult issues both human and social…
– Paul Derbyshire