Fedya Ili born in USSR. Based in Berlin.
Do you remember those children whose parents were always on the move? A different city every few years. They often seemed more worldly, more detached. I was one of them.
My childhood was happy. I remember watching my father develop photographs in our home darkroom, the image slowly revealing itself in silence and chemistry. Maybe that’s where my lens began to develop too — in the quiet, in the waiting.
City to city, culture to culture. I kept looking. Who were these people? What moved them? What could I see through them? Snap — solution — focus — a photograph is born.
Over time, that gaze became my language. I explore the intimacy of presence, memory, and the body — drawn to the space between eroticism and stillness. My work is shaped by warm light, shadow, and silence. What forms in front of me isn’t just a portrait, but a fragment of something felt: desire, vulnerability, place. A memory of skin, silence, and light.
I often work with Polaroids and large-format prints, creating limited editions that hold both physical texture and emotional depth. My photographs have been exhibited in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and Moscow. I’ve published several photography books and zines, and for five years co-edited the art anthology Mein Schwules Auge. My work lives in private collections in New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Chicago, Bangkok, Rio-de-Janeiro, Buenos Aires, San Remo, Munich, Cologne, Riga, Minsk, Kiev, Kazan, Los Angeles and Moscow.
Let’s take a trip through the frame — and let the image form.
Selected Exhibitions:
2025 – “My Gay Eye”, Berlin, group show
2019 – Solo show “Naked Moscow”, Berlin
2016 – Naked Petersburg, The Netherlands, group show
2015 – “DoubleVision”, New York, group show
2014 – Solo show “12 Meses de Buenos Aires”, Buenos Aires
2014 – “Body sex”, Melbourne, group show
Books & Publications:
• My Gay Eye (ed. 2019–2023)
• Naked Cities series (2015–2019)
• Significant Other (2015)
• In Your Eyes (2020)
• BUTT magazine (Netherlands), Du&Ich cover story (Germany), TÊTU (France), HIVPLUS magazine (USA), KALTBLUT (Germany), BLU magazine (Germany), MÄNNER (Germany), Siegessäule (Germany), Elska Berlin (USA), Pagina 12 (Argentina), GAY.RU (Russia), MascularMagazine (UK), Queer.de (Germany), Eroticco Mag (Spain), Reykjavík Grapevine (Iceland)