"For the last 10 years I have been working at political conventions of CDU, SPD, Grüne and Linke in Germany to show what happens behind the curtains of the political theatre. Many of the pictures have been published in the media as DIE ZEIT, FREITAG, taz, FuturZwei.
I started the work as photo student rebel and ended up on assignment for Der Spiegel keeping my style."
—Nikita Teryoshin

"Before major elections, political actors reaffirm themselves at federal party conventions. More than anything else, these events are about producing images that will be broadcast on the evening news. Accordingly, the effort devoted to staging is immense: sets are constructed, tons of cables are laid, and sound and lighting are controlled down to the smallest detail. Every image has to be just right. The parties and their prominent representatives want—and need—to look good.

But they have not reckoned with Nikita Teryoshin. Who is to tell him, the photographer, which images are to be produced here? Over a period of ten years, Teryoshin attended the large-scale events of all democratic parties established in the German Bundestag. At first he photographed on his own initiative, later also on assignment for Der Spiegel. His images document the end of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, the jockeying for her succession, and the reshuffling of personnel within shifting opposition and governing coalitions up to the present day.

Yet the photographer’s real subject is the media staging of politics. Where such stagings attempt to conceal that political action is merely being simulated, they reveal a considerable comic potential."
—Mathias Königschulte, taz picture editor