Why Eugene Shishkin dropped out of a career in mathematics to be a photographer
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
One day, when EUGENE SHISHKIN was at university in Kaliningrad, Russia, he had to pluck up the courage to call his dad with the news that very few parents are ever overjoyed to hear. After starting his studies in Mathematics, and knowing that his father would have liked him to stick with it or any subject with solid career prospects and the promise of a steady income, Shishkin broke the news that he was dropping out to be a photographer.
Today the Kazakhstan-born photographer is shrouded in darkness, sitting daringly close to a nearby fan whizzing away while on Zoom, the heat of the plus thirty degree Moscow afternoon blistering outside. It’s been a number of years since that phone call. Now 29, a LONDON COLLEGE OF FASHION grad, and photographer for fashion publications all over the world, Shishkin’s father must have no doubts that his son made the right decision. After all, how could his Dad be angry when he himself was the one responsible for igniting Shishkin’s creative passion?
“My father used to do photography in his early twenties, maybe even earlier, when he was in school,” Shishkin recalls. “He had the old school enlarger and a printing room in his bathroom. That was just his hobby and he wanted to start doing it again and bought a full kit; camera, lenses, flash, tripod - everything. I was just joking around and trying things. But one summer I went to, you know, this classic hotel location… all inclusive to Turkey. We had this semi-professional camera with us and I remember taking a picture on the plane. It was my step-mother sitting and holding my little brother, I think he was like one or two back then. And I had this preset on the camera. You know there’s sepia and santopia, which is like black and white but bluish, kind of. And I was amazed by the result. I was like, fuck, it’s so easy for me to do something that inspires me. I should do it more often. And I spent the entire trip just taking pictures and shooting everything.”
Photography quickly became a hobby for Shishkin. And that hobby quickly became an obsession. Before long, he had enrolled onto a weekend photography course, spending the days in between counting down the minutes before he could pick up a camera again. “At some point I had a friend, she was also a photographer, and she said there’s a photography course in Kaliningrad, do you want to go there? I was like ok let’s try it, it was the first lesson for free or something like that. I went there and she didn’t come. But the master there, he was my first photography master I learnt from, he taught me how to love art. Before, for me, it was just a hobby, it was fun and stuff. But he made it so I started treating it seriously.”
Now, Shishkin treats photography not only as his profession but as an art form grounded in experimentation, confidence, trust and self-awareness. He treats his work with authority, with a perfected understanding of how to lift the layer of reservation between him and his subject, revealing the raw honesty that has become an entrenched characteristic of his work. “Whoever you are, it’s important to understand yourself and apply it to work,” he explains. “For me, I prefer one-to-one shootings. Of course, I work in fashion and in almost 99% of the shoots, there’s always a team of like six people and it’s fine now, but still to this day I prefer one-to-one shootings.”
“When you’re taking a picture of anyone, it’s very important that the camera shouldn’t exist between you.”
By removing the camera and nurturing the relationship between Shishkin and the model, the result is a connection that some photographers can only dream of achieving; a sense of life in the model’s eyes, a glimpse of a moment in time that feels like it still would have existed even without the camera there to document it. Shishkin does not force the photograph, rather the photograph is just proof that the most perfect, prepossessing moment happened, which is only possible because of how he approaches his work, each and every time.
There’s usually only one way that Western audiences look at art and photography from other areas of the world. Most of the time, what we want from creatives across the globe is a snapshot into how life might be different, how it might be strange to us, how it might fulfill the stereotypes of misconceptions we already have about a country. We love an exploration in national identity. We love any sort of comment on the injustices or hardships that have become inherent, in our minds, of those countries. And whilst these artistic explorations are necessary, profound, and often undeniably beautiful, we begin to overlook the myriad other elements that make up a country and its people.
Whilst Shishkin’s work did start out as an exploration of national identity, what he focuses on now seems more of an ambition to satisfy himself creatively, rather than to just give audiences what they might want. In fact, his photography has become almost exclusively for him. As an artist, it’s important to weed out ego from your work, and that’s what Shishkin does by focusing solely on his own opinions of what he creates. “I do respect other people’s opinions, I just think every artist should only consider his own opinion,” he says. “Because other people’s opinions are destructive, you can lose yourself in their opinions. That I think is how I would like to describe my work - trying not to get lost in playing by the rules of the industry.”
Shishkin’s work doesn’t seem to get lost in the commercial. Even though his photography has featured in the Russian arms of magazines such as ELLE, Numero, Harper’s Bazaar, Grazia and more, the photographer’s personality is not lost in the making. Of course, with every job comes comments, suggestions, the “this is great! But can we do it more like this…?” remarks. But Shishkin still endeavours to create on his own terms, with his own vision and ethos firmly in his mind.
And the result is often extraordinary; a display of raw talent that exhibits in its veins - in the DNA of Shishkin’s work - years of progress and development. You can see the traces of passion from hobby to profession, the efforts to achieve a certain dynamism with each shot, and the underlying rigour to keep ego at bay and sincerity laced throughout.