Ivan Anisimov

Born in 1988 in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Russia, Ivan Anisimov is a photographer, operator and director. He graduated from Moscow Polytechnic College in Photography Technology and Art (2008). Since the early 2010s, he has devoted himself to documentary photography, working with archives, and making documentary and experimental films. 

At the heart of his artistic practice is the study of broken links: between place and memory, between body and society, between personal and collective experience. His approach combines photography, cinema and video as forms of poetic documentary observation. For him, the fixation of reality is not so much an act of testimony as a gesture like a ritual: a way of retaining what escapes, paying particular attention to the image devoid of obvious author or expressiveness – almost impersonal, as if it had been produced “without will”, by reality itself. This relationship with the image moves away from classical aesthetics and towards an everyday use of recording: the document becomes a trace, a residue, a form of elusive memory, on the borderline between the personal gaze and the anonymous system of preservation. 

Ivan has taken part in projects for the French Institute in Moscow and the Goethe Institute, and has worked as a cinematographer and editor on films and videos in Russia, Georgia, France and Spain. Since 2024, he has lived in Paris and is a member of the Agency of Artists in Exile.