German photographer and filmmaker Tobias Zielony’s (born 1973) latest series documents the gay techno scene of Kiev, Ukraine. Maskirovka alludes to a Russian method of deceptive warfare evoking images of gas masks and hooded soldiers, while the photographs themselves explore other types of “masking” in the expression of sexual identity.
Le Vele di Scampia is a futuristic housing estate in northern Naples and a Camorra battlefield. Conceived by Francesco di Salvo in the late seventies and widely recognised for their urbanistic, Le Vele (The Sails) were squatted by mafia families even before completion. Today the building complex is a symbol of the Camorra’s power in the Naples region and a key centre of European drug trafficking. Matteo Garrone shot his movie Gomorra based on the Novel by Roberto Saviano on the site in 2008. Tobias Zielony’s film Le Vele di Scampia from 2009 originates in this very place. Seven thousand single images, shot at night with a digital single-lens reflex camera, are used to create nine minutes of animation film. The book Vele is based on this animation film with an selection of 287 single images.
Published by Spector Books. Text by Ulrich Domröse, Maren Lübke-Tidow, Vanessa Joan Müller.
Tobias Zielony’s recent photo series started with a chance encounter. A conversation with a young couple on a Berlin subway train led Zielony to suggest to photograph them. At the next stop they took a few quick shots on the platform. She told him that she could always be found around here, and he could come back anytime to take more pictures. Here?—I walk the street, right around the corner! They meet again, Zielony first portrays her and then also her fellow prostitutes and friends. The result is the 40 part series Jenny Jenny. It is not documentary: Tobias Zielony avoids the journalistic impetus for certainty and truth. To him, the authenticity of the subject is as relevant as the question of the objectivity of the documentary image: both are never free of dramatic elements. The book was published on occasion of the exhibition Tobias Zielony: Jenny Jenny in the Berlinischen Galerie.
Tobias Zielony captures the life of adolescent indigenous gang members in Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba province in Canada. In keeping with the tradition of classic photo journalism, Zielony makes use of various genres of photography; including portraits of gang members posing in front of the camera and views of the urban landscape in and outside Winnipeg.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Maik Schlüter. Text by Florian Ebner.
Tobias Zielony's photographs capture instances of open and latent violence, with particular emphasis on present-day youth culture. Zielony here presents a collection of portraits of street and prison gangs with Native American roots.
Berlin-based photographer Tobias Zielony has visited the small, ramshackle Californian chemistry city because it is 'possibly the worst place in America, if not the world', to quote a blog; his pictures show a small town entirely in the grasp of producers, dealers and consumers of a crystalline drug that keeps people on their toes for days and lets them age decades in the course of a mere few months. Chemists call it methamphetamine, addicts call it 'crystal', or 'meth', or both; politicians call it the new American pandemic.
Tobias Zielony: Maskirovka
Tobias Zielony: Vele
Tobias Zielony: Jenny Jenny
Tobias Zielony: Manitoba
Tobias Zielony: Story, No Story
Tobias Zielony: Trona