Slava Mogutin is a New York-based Russian-American multimedia artist and author exiled from Russia for his outspoken writing and activism. During Paris Fashion Week Slava unveiled his latest book project, VTMNTS UNCENSORED!
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The book is a collaboration with Vetements and creative director Guram Gvasalia, it was shot this past spring-summer in Paris, Berlin, Zurich, NY and LA. It’s my most ambitious commission project to date, with 160 pages of analogue photography and body scans, 5 covers and 25 models from very diverse backgrounds.
Informed by his bicultural dissident and refugee experience, Mogutin’s work examines the notions of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, and love and hate.
Born Yaroslav Yurievich Mogutin (Ярослав Юрьевич Могутин) in the industrial city of Kemerovo, Siberia, he left his family and moved to Moscow at age 14. A third-generation writer and self-taught journalist, he soon began working as a reporter and editor for the first independent Russian newspapers, publishers, and radio stations, such as Echo of Moscow, The Moscow Times, The Moscow Guardian, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Stolitsa, and Novy Vzglyad. He was hailed as one of the foremost voices of the post-Perestroika new journalism and the only openly gay personality in the Russian media.
By the age of 21, Mogutin had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation and became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to seven years. He was charged with “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms,” “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence,” “inflaming social, national, and religious division,” and “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions.” Find out more at slavamogutin.com
