Photographer
Kirill Sakryukin builds his surrealism before he ever loads a camera, not after. Working out of Saint Petersburg since at least 2019, he has assembled a gown entirely from hundreds of red balloons stacked into a train, dressed two models as taxidermied court animals inside a paneled drawing room, and anchored an antique picture frame in open ocean with a body sealed inside it, all captured on set rather than composited afterward. He calls the decade-long project 'Rejection of Reality,' a rule that nothing gets faked in post: gold paint goes on skin, honey goes in the bathtub, and the storm in the background is the actual weather that day. His 2023 series 'CAT,' a six-model production with ten hours of makeup work staged inside a Saint Petersburg hotel, stands as the most elaborate build of his career so far and a good entry point into how he works.
Learn More →Signature Traits
Major Works
CAT (2023)
His own account calls this the most ambitious build of the year: six models, ten hours of makeup work, staged inside what he calls the most beautiful hotel in Saint Petersburg.
Mannequin (2023)
Shot across Saint Petersburg and Moscow before the production moved to Dubai that November, part of the expansion that now has him working across three cities.
Perestroika (2020)
A series he describes as tracking every upheaval in his own life at the time, changing, in his own words, at a wild pace.
