Authors
S Khairov1; 1 University of Glasgow, UK Discussion
I grew up in a provincial town in Mordovia and spent every summer in a Tatar village with my grandparents. Since then I lived in other cities and countries, but kept returning to this village, speaking with the people and documenting the changes.
Many photographs in this slide show have been exhibited at the "Returns" exhibition in Petrozavodsk, Russia (1-30 August 2019, together with Alexey Savkin) and come from Karelia, the Leningrad region, Ukraine, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Scotland. The ‘returns’ of the exhibition’s title were markers, both of points in space and of important moments in life’s journey, in the photographer’s understanding of himself and the world around him.
Shamil Khairov is a lecturer in Russian at the University of Glasgow (Subjects: Russian language and culture, Slavonic languages). He has been invited to give lectures on Russian visual culture and photography in Belgium, The Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Slovakia.
Solo exhibitions: Quiet Russia, Edinburgh, Scotland (2009); The Colours of Silence / Barvy Ticha, Ostrava, The Czech Republic (2012); Simple Things / Einfache Dinge, Germersheim, Germany (2013); Beyond the Seven Rivers / Za Siedmoma Rzekami, Warsaw, Poland (2014); Letters from Russia, Leuven, Belgium (2016), Returns / Возвращения, Petrozavodsk, Russia (with Alexei Savkin, 2019). 
