Ilya Rodin (born Moscow). Graduated from the Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE), the School of Design, majoring in Photography in Fashion and Advertising. Deals with the themes of cultural memory, people and environments, as well as the boundaries between in-game and traditional photography. Member of the community of in-game photographers in Russia (Ingame). Lives and works in Moscow.
Group exhibitions:
- 2020 – Rukami Festival. Moscow, Russia.
- 2020 – HSE ONLINE GALLERY. Moscow, Russia.
- 2019 – WHAT TIME ARE YOU? Walk in play time. Moscow, Russia.
- 2019 – PHOTOBOOKZINEPRINTPRESSFEST. Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
- 2018 – “Design NEXT”. Moscow, Russia.
All author's works
The “Katya” series is a kind of exercise for rapprochement, not just a dedication to a loved one, but an attempt to feel into inaccessible bodily experiences, overcoming the boundaries of the documentary genre through artistic reconstruction of an acute psychophysical sensation.
Vinogradova
Arcadia
In the title and a number of images, the author quotes the photo project “Arcadia” by Anastasia Tsayder. A series of works is based on a game that the photographer wrote as a dedication to his girlfriend. The virtual topography of the game is based on its inner world and is fundamentally closed from outsiders: there is no way to play this game. New media in the Rodin”s project make it possible to shift the focus of attention from a person, but preserve his invisible presence as the main background or condition for existence.
The “Elephant” series is part of a research project on the aesthetics of in-game photography and, among other things, the representation of art in video games. As the video game industry grows and technology allows for more and more detailed setting designs, the game space is saturated with atmospheric or meaningful details, including artworks that can be references to existing classics, as well as original creations by anonymous game developers. As part of the project, Ilya Rodin documented the interiors and exteriors of twelve video games in which examples of pictorial art can be found. A zine and a quest game were created from these pictures: a three-dimensional picture gallery in which all the works of art found by the photographer are collected.
Series
The mission of the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, one of the oldest science and technology museums in the world, was to popularize scientific knowledge; since its founding in the 19th century, it has collected ideological artefacts, working models, projects and objects from a wide range of scientific disciplines and power regimes. Today, the museum is under restoration and its collection has been put into storage. Ilya Rodin decided to play with ideas about the role of the museum, and nature of scientific knowledge in his series “Exposition”. According to the photographer, “any kind of exposition can be assembled from the archives of Polytechnic University, reflecting any ideology and serving any purpose.” Rodin selected a number of exhibits for the work – among them a diesel engine, a moon shard, a prototype of a mechanical hand prosthesis, a pump, a black box, a Skoda automobile disc, and the nose of a fighter jet – and turned them into 3D models using photogrammetry. By giving the models a mirror-like surface, he places them on the background of panoramic Google maps images; the object thus dissolves into the landscape, questioning the supposed transparency of natural scientific knowledge.
