Friday 20 February 2015

Wired Magazine Pavel Durov

I recently shot a fascinating story for Wired Magazine about Russian anarcho-capitalist Pavel Durov, Founder of VKontakte. The Russian social media site has over 70 million daily users and has been dubbed the "Russian Facebook". Controversy surrounds Pavel, and I was really intrigued to meet and photograph him. He was recently involved in a stand off with a Russian SWAT team and has been ousted as CEO of his own company by allies of Vladimir Putin, all as a result of him refusing to comply with Putin's demands for information on his colleagues at VKontakte. We decided to shoot outside London's West End Central Police Station, the stark architecture has a really graphic quality which lent itself brilliantly to this shoot. Art Director Steve Peck and I worked together to create a marriage and styling and location to form an emotive feel to the shoot that felt right and which Pavel loved . 

Check out this link for more info wired.com