New East Digital Archive

Wild nights: shedding light on Moscow after dark

18 December 2014

Photographer Nikita Shokhov spent four years observing and documenting Moscow nightlife to create an album of arresting images that offers an insightful social study on human behaviour. Using no filters, he captures a demographically diverse range of Muscovites, from hipsters to strippers, at various stages of their evening — getting ready to go out, on the dancefloor, locked in an embrace — and in a variety of settings from foam parties to clubs to casinos. Observing the debauchery through his sober eyes, Shokhov sketches a picture of the absurd and the comedic, and the seediness and the tenderness that characterise a night out in the Russian capital.