My Beautiful Tomorrow

The subjects from the archive My Beautiful Tomorrow can see themselves in their deeply forgotten childhoods, during the times of irregularly changing paradigms, such as the ones from the late 1990s and early 2000s; when the last fragments of the Soviet Empire were barely visible, as they started to increasingly transition toward something else. The archival series of photographs introduces the viewer to an era of cramped coexistence between the parents’ clear vision of happiness and success — an idealised image grabbed from the withdrawing century and the new imported values and technologies, which gave birth to a widespread phenomenon: idealised photographic services directed at school or kindergarten pupils. The first users of such early versions of Photoshop soon created new “advanced” characters and immediately occupied this niche market of children photography.

Maksym Kozlov is a multidisciplinary manager with a transmedia background. In his cultural practice, he focuses on images through which he analyses the anthropological and historical interrelationships that address themes both political and poetic. Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.