2022 Rewind: Check Out These Hunky 'Russian Dudes' from Activist & Photographer Seva Galkin
EDGE is looking back at 2022 and we're resharing some of our favorite stories of the year.
Seva Galkin is an artist pushing Russia's homophobic policies. As a filmmaker he was censored last year for his film about two young gay men reports the French website TÊTU. Now as a photographer he has a new project called "Russian Dudes" that features "Russian men with little or no clothing."
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He is using nudity to make a point.
"Here he stands before us: the hero of this book, naked, proud and sure of himself," Galkin writes in a press release, TÊTU reports. "A modern Russian man. We can take away his rights, his ability to mention LGBT people in a positive way, but you can't take away his nudity."
"Thus," TÊTU adds, "for the photographer faced with the homophobic repression of Russian power, rebellion passes through the gaze: the male body can be exhibited, admired, but also seen as an object of tenderness and desire..."
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Last year Galkin made headlines when his short film "The Fans" was pulled from the Moscow International Film Festival. "The Russian filmmaker then denounced this homophobic censorship. To escape it this time, he had his photobook 'Russian Dudes' published by a German publishing house. The book, available for purchase online, was thus able to integrate more revealing images than those used in this slideshow..." adds TÊTU.
In commenting on Galkin's work, Metrosource writes: "The subjects in Galkin's universe are silent gods, lording over the possibilities of what could be. His erotic renderings represent sensuality unleashed. They are an important rebuke of the homophobes who currently hold power in smother-Russia. Gay men can be just as masculine as straight men in the right light."
He also made two other short films, "Heart Defect" (2014) and "Three Times About This (Yaroslav)" (2011), as well as numerous Russian music videos.
Check out his pics of Russian men on his IG:
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