War doesn’t start on the battlefield. It starts at the trade fair.
We’re used to thinking of war as bombings, deaths, hunger and desperation. But these are really just the terrible visible consequences of a mechanism set in motion much earlier, far from the battlefield, where war is planned by men in fine uniforms decorated with medals of honor; by those who design and work on weapons of destruction, behind the scenes and far from any danger. By those who have turned this terrible phenomenon into an actual business.
Nikita Teryoshin, a photographer of Russian origin, shows us all of this in his series “Nothing Personal – The Back Office of War,” a project that began in 2016 and that he continues to carry forward today.

The entire photographic series revolves around a central contrast: on one side, the chaos and destruction caused by war; on the other, the leisurely, luxurious atmosphere of trade fairs dedicated to the defense industry.

The ultimate goal of Teryoshin’s work is to document the trade fairs held across the world’s continents in order to show them to as many people as possible, underscoring the global scale of this particular, delicate market. Between 2016 and 2025, the artist personally attended, as an active observer, twenty exclusive defense-industry trade fairs, traveling to a number of different countries.

Despite the macabre subject they deal with, these events are organized to perfection, just like any other trade fair: the mood is festive, wine and good food flow freely, and so do the latest generation of gleaming weapons.

What unites these shots is the anonymity of the people captured in them. The photographer is particularly careful to obscure the faces of the men who appear in his images. He often uses strategic angles, placing an object in front of their faces; other times he shoots them from behind or deliberately crops out part of the face.

As he himself explains, his work is almost meant to echo the photomontages made in the 1930s by the great German artist John Heartfield:

“I deliberately chose not to show the businessmen’s faces. It’s not my intention to draw attention to any specific person. Those anonymized dealers, with weapons sprouting from their heads, can be seen as a reference to Dangerous Dining Companions, the anti-war drawing made by John Heartfield in the 1930s, before the Second World War. I really appreciate that symbolism.”

This article was produced in collaboration with Luigi Falanga and Gaia Forlin aka @super8otto.