Nikita Teryoshin
From 'Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War'
We are looking at part of a trade show for arms. Here, quite literally, we see the genteel banality that exists alongside one of the most lucrative economies in the world. A model of a naval gun, a Bofors 57 mk 3, sits at the centre of the frame. Behind it, a large promotional image shows the gun in situ, positioned as commander of the sea, a triumph of deadly engineering. This is marketing. The projection of power in the background image amplifies the potential of the model for sale.
What makes this photograph extraordinary is the half-eaten buffet in the foreground. The civility of catering, the flash of colour from the food, the paper doilies, all of it jars with the severe geometry of the naval gun behind. In a different setting this could be the spread for a wedding or a corporate event. The aesthetics of war clash with the aesthetics of hospitality. Champagne and finger food next to killing machines. This is how the global arms trade operates: weapons sold alongside wine, networking over canapés, death made normal through politeness.
The people are anonymised. Teryoshin photographed 14 arms fairs across five continents between 2016 and 2020, deliberately obscuring faces throughout the series. The back of a woman in a flowery dress, the cuff of a besuited man, a phone resting face down as its owner refuels at the buffet. These could be guests at any corporate function. The anonymity is strategic. This isn't about individuals, it's about the system. Arms dealers, military representatives, politicians, all mingling in sterile exhibition halls where the business of war is conducted with corporate efficiency.
The global arms trade was worth $112 billion in 2020. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have bolstered sales further. German manufacturer Rheinmetall's share price more than doubled in the two months following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. UK arms exports doubled during 2022 to a record £8.5 billion. These numbers are generated here, at fairs where weapons are sold as casually as vacuum cleaners, where slogans like "Protecting Peace" and "Engineered for Life" disguise what the products actually do. The buffet, the wine, the flowers, the red carpets, all of it normalises an industry built on death. This is the back office of war: polite, profitable, and utterly disconnected from what happens when the weapons are used.
Nikita Teryoshin (b. 1986, St Petersburg) is a Berlin-based photographer whose series 'Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War' (2016-2020) documents arms fairs across 14 countries and five continents. . Teryoshin works as a freelance photographer for publications including Der Spiegel, ZEIT, and The New Yorker.
More on Teryoshin: nikitateryoshin.com
