Semyon’s World

May 14

For the longest time, Semyon’s profile picture was his girlfriend’s feet on his face. It’s a perfect representation of the spirit of youth living in post-Soviet Russia. Hidden away in uniform concrete apartments, their lives resembled a quiet beauty, one that meant warm teen years for many.

For a select few, these years would become memories as they planned their escape. But never on two single benches mirroring each other — those were holy structures for gatherings of youth, when time stopped too radically to think about anything at all.

Portrait of tattooed young man in post-Soviet Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World,” an essay by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2022

To say “hidden away” would be wrong, as all they did was make themselves known. Russia, in many ways, had instilled an underdog status in post-Soviet adults, who would go on to have kids that never truly identified with one set of ideals.

Their escape would become social platforms — quiet lives for many on the outside, but full of life on their phones. The leaked Lana Del Rey track would first appear on her phone. His moral compass became the magnetic Hollywood actor that would represent freedom and proximity to opportunity.

Young woman sitting on a bed holding a keyboard in a dimly lit bedroom in Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2022

Semyon leans into it. Being an observer grants power. The self-aware perspective and talent to frame, capture, and emotionally translate this little world intrigued me years back.

Living in Batumi, Georgia, in the winter of 2021, with lockdown in effect, my world had to become a digital escape. Semyon’s work became an equalizer — his eye saw, grabbed this lifestyle by the collar, and presented it as something uniquely beautiful.

It so vividly strays away from the normal pattern — to leave, create anew, and restart. Semyon’s work leaned so deeply into it, it fostered a natural body of work that does more than show us a small type of life, in just another country, with just another subculture built upon a compote of past and future longing.

Two teenagers sitting by an apartment window during lockdown in post-Soviet Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2022

I remember my frustration. The whole matter was absurd. Though looking back, it saved me. I owe the spirit of my need for catalyzation to it.

In the wake of a promising 2020 spring, lockdown begins. The world receives a pause, travel bans are put in place, and my family plans to travel across the Atlantic to Russia. Prior to our leave in January, the first summer of lockdown felt electric. TikTok became the hub for teen youth. A record store, mall, school lunch table — this one platform would go on to become a place of refuge. “Straight TikTok” was somewhere you did not want to be. Grunge TikTok was somewhere I resided most proudly.

I remember, once we could begin to see others rarely — or rather I would mostly accompany my sister’s meet-and-greets with her boyfriend and his family — I would announce that I was part of grunge TikTok as if I had fought for it my whole life. It was my greatest achievement at the time. Cavetown, Shoegaze, picking through your dad’s old clothing from the early 2000s — baggy jeans and polos that smelled of attic air — there became an alchemy to life.

Young woman looking into a mirror in a dark apartment bathroom in Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

Amidst all this, post-Soviet Russia became the pinnacle of cool. Well-off teens living in gated suburban neighborhoods in South Florida — their parents — doctors and lawyers — would romanticize the concrete sameness of post-war life.

The teens that were forced to deal with their back-of-the-line positioning were now being brought towards the front of the line, with the most popular kid mimicking the make-up of a person as an aesthetic, rather than seeing them as the product of a complex and different scope of opportunity.

Portrait of red-haired teenager against a blurred cityscape in Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

I remember going to school, remembering how weird it was to see the “popular” kids look like side characters in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Headphones on a string, just to come back to their multimillion-dollar houses, in which their mom would be begging them to put on a polo.

You know what I think they were missing? The grit and chemical freedom.

Young couple standing closely together inside a small apartment doorway in post-Soviet Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

The radical acceptance of their positioning allowed the red-headed, freckled 14-year-old angel from a concrete sameness to find beauty in the mundanity of her living.

Though dangerous in the long run — to fall in love with the boy next door, who would probably be drinking his brain away in 20 years — at the time they would find themselves two beings on the edge of society, away from the big Euro cities and the titan of America, yet just close enough to be sizzled by the feeling that they simply missed their birthplace by a step on the ladder.

Young woman sitting alone in a hallway lit by afternoon sunlight in Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

So they would go on. They would throw on their synthetic windbreakers, cheap jeans from the nearby mall, torn-up tennis shoes, and spend their lives outside.

The Russian days when the sun felt perfectly warm and soft, and the night would carry the humidity through. They would drink on the steps, walk to alleys to make out, sit at each other’s apartments.

Teenagers watching television inside an attic bedroom in rural Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

When at home, their phones would become spaces of private texts and calls — plans to maybe get out, confessions of eternal love, heavy tears falling on the glass — the obsession of a boy, a beautiful girl, the urge to protect beauty, the weight of the world creeping in, the weight of lack of proximity.

In the morning, they would wake up to drink tea on the balcony, and do it all over again. Chemical lives of longing, displacement, purity.

Young man sitting on a washing machine inside a small apartment in Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2023

This is where we find Semyon’s work. An observer of the process. A scientist and absolutely necessary excavator of this life. Semyon breathes such honesty into the work, it makes it mythic. Those kids would grow up. Some would stay, some would leave. Late-night runs and conversations would become sweaters in drawers. If you were to bring your nose closer to the fabric, you could still faintly smell the summer night.

The long hair, freckled face, cuffed jeans, displaced. Long and distant lands of same cities, the same cheap snacks, the same ten friends that would band together and intensify the almost explosive potential in each individual. It amplified in the beauty of it all, the way all their parents knew their kids were currently in-between.

Young woman spinning with outstretched arms in a residential courtyard in post-Soviet Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2022

The parents’ hearts would ache painfully later, wishing they could turn back the clock and see their son with pimples, long hair, and beat-up tennis shoes, just for a moment to give him a hug while he was in a strange, beautiful place.

Away from the world, a time capsule of this life was built through Semyon’s work. Depicting a world so in-between, it amplified the instinctual feeling we can experience when our external systems fall down — true freedom, the beauty of seeing everything simply, through the eyes of an unknown Russian teenager.

Elderly woman sitting in a modest bedroom with Soviet-era interior details in rural Russia. Photograph by Semyon Kokorin featured in “Semyon’s World” by Timofey Abel. — Photograph by Semyon Kokorin, Russia, 2022

Photographs by Semyon KokorinEssay by Timofey Abel

Timofey Abel

Timofey Abel (b. Moscow) is a New York–based photographer and author. After leaving Russia as a refugee and growing up between cultures, Abel developed a deep sensitivity to people, memory, and atmosphere. His images are shaped by careful light and a strong sense of form, balancing intimacy with a contemporary sensibility. His work was recognized by the Professional Photographers of America in a two-page feature titled Timelessness, which noted the dialogue within his photographs between tradition and the present.

Alongside his studio practice, Abel contributes to the photographic community through education and public programming. He has led talks and masterclasses on direction, light, and storytelling, including Timeless Light & Storytelling at Cam Kirk Studios in collaboration with the Atlanta School of Photography and supported by PPA, drawing more than one hundred creatives. For this engagement with the city’s cultural life, he was profiled by Rough Draft Atlanta as “lighting the way for Atlanta’s next creative wave.”

His photographs have appeared internationally, including in Glamour and British Vogue. In 2025, Abel released his debut monograph, Timofey Abel — 20, a reflection on youth, time, and becoming, and founded Odesa Publishing, an independent imprint dedicated to long-form publishing. He is currently developing Resonance, an evolving project exploring instinct, sensitivity, and human presence.

https://timofeyabel.com