Bold Patterns Created by Animals and their Shadows

Alexey Menschikov uses photography to construct graphic patterns. Taking shapes from real life – cats, birds, people, jutting architectural lines – he plays with light and shadow, reproducing the images in Photoshop to make playful grids of repeating form.

Inspired by “the city, people, birds, cats and beautiful works of artists and photographers,” Menschikov’s process can take anywhere up to two weeks. He comes up with an idea and then seeks to implement it, finding a location and the appropriate materials, before shooting and then spending a few hours putting the final product together in post-processing.

Bold in black and white, Menschikov’s images are surreal and arresting. Often the softness of the animals and their shadows that he uses so often are hardened by repetition, forming a coherent grid. Other images are simpler, but always compositionally acute and adopting the same tropes of animals, human figures, and clean lines.

Though Menschikov says that some of his images are “simply visual without any implications,” he prefers when a piece is motivated by an idea. Having dreamt of becoming an artist, but finding himself unable to paint, he turned to photography as an alternative canvas. His freedom and creativity of construction suggest that inclination towards fine art, his images existing somewhere separated from reality; far from the truth claims and documentary capability of some photography, his work is pure form.

All images (C) Alexey Menschikov.

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