Valery Katsuba was born in 1965 in Byelorussia, USSR, and studied at the Maritime Academy in St Petersburg. After finishing it, he met journalist Sergey Kalinin and art historian Catherine Phillips, and under their influence started to work in journalism. He produced pieces for St Petersburg radio and television and for BBC radio and television, and wrote about the art of St Petersburg and Moscow in the age of Perestroika for Kommersant, The Guardian, The Independent, Vogue Paris and others. In the late 1990s, he started to collaborate with Vogue magazine, which set up a Russian edition, also with W Magazine and others producing photoshoots for renowned photographers such as Arthur Elgort, Neil Kirk, Philip-Lorca di Corcia and stylists Katharina Flohr and Carin Roitfeld. In 2002, he started filming with his own Hasselblad, a gift from Neil Kirk, who was to become the first collector of his work.

 

Valery Katsuba’s best-known photographic series are Phiscultura (2006), The Model: Classic and Contemporary (2018), The Seasons. My Friends (2005). Each was created as a narrative, based on classical traditions in art and literature, on historical research and, above all, on personal observations and perceptions. To create such photographic series the artist works (as director, choreographer or trainer) with models – athletes, dancers, actors, circus performers, workers or friends in Mexico, Spain, Russia, London, Bacu, New York,  etc.. His works are in the collections of the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Russian Museum (St Petersburg), the Museum of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid), Shanghai Centre of Photography and others.