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He sees what others would overlook. He creates magic out of nothing. From the most banal everyday scenes he manages to form images that exude an extraordinary spell. Russian photographer Emil Gataullin is a master of poetic black-and-white photography, a photography reminiscent of Henri Cartier-Bresson. His theme is the Russian village: a life far away from big decisions and sensations. Gataullin’s work is at the same time documentary and photographic poem, it dances on the thin line between deliberate sparseness and restraint and affectionate composition. Gataullin’s pictures neither glorify nor denigrate. They are a declaration of love for a Russia beyond Moscow. They prescribe nothing for the viewer – and are all the more mysterious for that. This magic world of Russian village life is accompanied by a poetic text by Peter-Matthias Gaede, GEO Editor-in-Chief of 20 years. Towards the Horizon won the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2014 and is volume 1 of the Visual Poetry series.

Emil Gataullin is a Russian monumental and fresco painter. He studied at the V. Surikov Moscow State Academy Art Institute. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, he began to take an interest in photography, and found in photography theorist Alexander Lapin his teacher and mentor. His love is the black and white photography with increasingly frequent trips to color. Emil Gataullin lives in Korolyov near Moscow.