War is hell, but the trade show rocks.
Some 22,000 people descended on Kielce, Poland, last month for the International Defense Industry Exhibition, to check out the latest weapons of war. German photographer Nikita Teryoshin captured the bizarre scene in Nothing Personal. Men and women in crisp suits and expensive shoes clamber into tanks like shoppers testing couches at Ikea and snap selfies with machine guns like tourists on vacation. “It’s nothing personal,” Teryoshin says. “It’s just business.”
Teroyshin has a penchant for weird trade shows, and has photographed expos brimming with everything from coffins to pet supplies. When he discovered a YouTube video of last years arms fair, he immediately signed up. “Every day in the news you see pictures of war and destruction,” he says. “For me, it was another way to look at the subject.”
He arrived to find the nice hotels booked and the dumps charging crazy prices, so he crashed on a couch and bummed rides to the show. More than 600 companies from 30 countries filled the cavernous expo center, hawking everything from drones and thermal vision cameras to missile systems and gunships. Teryoshin wandered about with a Nikon D800 and a flash. He avoided revealing faces, choosing instead to provide just a glimpse of the people. “I wanted to show human beings, but not like, ‘Look at this guy with ginger hair who is selling us weapons,’” he says.
The tightly cropped vignettes pointedly highlight uneasy contrasts---a woman in the cockpit of a helicopter, her high-heels more suited to a bank than the battlefield, a tray of appetizers set against a battleship backdrop. For the people Teryoshin photographed, it's just business as usual. Even if that business is war.
