JTF (just the facts): Published in 2026 by Void (here). Hardcover with tipped-in image, 16.8 x 23.8 cm, 128 pages, with 87 image reproductions. Includes a short essay by the artist. Design by João Linneu. In an edition of 750 copies. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: Domination is a slippery phenomenon. Applied as a blunt tool, its mechinations can appear one sided. A thug assaults a victim. A rancher traps cattle in a pen. A street photographer captures a pedestrian. One country seizes another’s resources, while its leader boasts “to the victor belong the spoils.” For a hammer wielding tyrant, every problem looks like a nail. Beat them into submission. Might makes right. End of the story.
Or is it? Once we dig a bit below the surface, power dynamics become more interesting. In the BDSM community, for example, domination, submission, pain, and pleasure can all be enjoyable experiences. Applied to an injured limb, a restrictive splint might aid long-term rehabilitation. Animal breeders sometimes employ uncomfortable practices—e.g., prying open a dog’s jaws to examine its teeth or saddling a horse over the course of several months—to achieve domesticated codependence.
Readers can find pictures of the above and more in Kristina Rozhkova’s latest monograph. It’s called Gut Feeling, and many of its images operate as literal gut punches. Perhaps a queasy stomach can feel good on occasion? The young Russian photographer (b. 1996) skewers bellies in the form of fish and sword swallowers, alongside glistening intestines, a half eaten apple, mutilated game, and nursing babes (plus some suckled toes for good measure). Few photobooks have relished physicality with such zeal. For those who’ve followed Rozhkova on Instagram (@strapon_svinopas) or through her earlier photobooks Bewitched and The Bliss Of Girlhood, the in-your-face graphic splendor will feel familiar. But those curations were comparatively less harnessed. For her latest book, the sequence hews tightly around themes of domination, captivity, and control.
If you’re wondering what might inspire such dark ideas in a bright emerging artist, the project is fueled by an incident in June 2024. After a photoshoot in a Russian cemetery, Rozhkova was denounced by a state informant. Blasphemy? Obscenity? Treason? The precise charge wasn’t determined, but she was detained by authorities and jailed for two months, followed by four months of house arrest. Rozhkova found the experience grueling. “I was an animal trapped in a cage,” she writes in the book’s afterword. After her release, she spent another year mired in legal difficulties, called to various court dates, “living every day in fear of being behind bars again. A hunted animal. Two years of pacing corner to corner.”
The downtime was miserable, but there was at least one perk. Rozhkova had many idle hours to consider her situation. “In that cell,” she concludes, “I realized there are two types of captive creatures. The wild: forced into that cage, they don’t understand it. They fear it. and the second, the domesticated and submissive: they might even love their cage for the comfort it provides.”
Based on her photos, one might be tempted to slot Rozhkova into the wild category. But it turns out she’d experienced both types of confinement. Long before becoming a political prisoner, she’d enjoyed playing in her mother’s dog breeding cages. “Between the ages of five and nine,” she explains, “I loved sitting in a dog crate, feeling it was my own little house.” Later, as an adult, she’d explored BDSM, working through ideas and relationships regarding power, restraint, and inequality (apparently many subs were wealthier than their dom partners). These formative experiences were later crystalized by her involuntary imprisonment.
It’s probably a safe to say Rozhkova’s feelings on power dynamics are nuanced. Like a football face mask or rat cage, Gut Feeling keeps the big stuff at bay. The photos present a range of options. The project is a status report of sorts, with final judgement yet to be determined. And that’s fine. It’s an outlet to work through active ideas, as much therapeutic vehicle as art monograph.
Rozhkova’s pictures explore repression, power, subjugation, and childhood memories, while avoiding judgement or dogma. There are no captions, labels, or explanations, just a dense stream of verticals in both color and black-and-white. If images of a spiked throne, stabbed hare, and bullseye darts hint at trophy hunting and predation, pictures of puppies, calves, and kids offer a gentle counterpoint. Maybe domination can be a two way street? Perhaps we are all imprisoned to some degree, trapped in various relationships, mortgages, locations, and habits? Gut Feeling leaves plenty of room for readers to consider their own personal history, and work through their own ideas.
Even if the book is open-ended, its visual style is deliberate. As in her past work, Rozhkova composes scenes with precision, portraying just what is needed, while cropping the excess. Most photos are exposed from close range and evenly lit with flash. The primary subjects expand to fill most of the available frame space, with little room wasted, as claustrophobic as a cell block. On occasion Rozhkova zooms in almost uncomfortably close, for example to capture moist baby teeth, an udder being milked, or high heels prodding a man’s belly. Personal boundaries? They feel mushy indeed here. One can imagine the state’s henchmen taking notice.
João Linneu’s design pushes some boundaries too, with a tactile relief cover and verso colophon. Void’s fluid sequencing and muted tonality seem well synched to Rozhkova’s palette. Her brief essay comes in an oversized serif typeface complete with antique ligatures and leaf graphics, the whole package couched in pencil scrawled end pages. The overall effect is novel and inviting. Who says gut feelings need be discomfiting? This book feels downright homey.
As for Rozhkova, her public profile is mercurial. Her past books have been sometimes hard to procure, with poor distribution. Her Instagram account was recently deactivated and all photo projects removed from her website. It’s unclear if the deletion was a protective measure, personal decision, draconian crackdown, or routine maintenance. Also unclear is her current location, contact info, and potential penal liability.
Gut Feeling is unabashedly geared to poke the Russian bear. “I won’t look away from my arrest,” she proclaims. “I will cast a light on this violence and show—without giving it a comfortable, consumable form—the unpleasant things I experienced myself.” Hopefully its publication has not put her in further legal jeopardy. Kristina Rozhkova, are you out there? If so, can you please post a safe-word somewhere, to let us know you’re ok?
Collector’s POV: Kristina Rozhkova does not appear to have consistent gallery representation at this time. As a result, interested collectors should likely follow up directly with the artist via her website (linked in the sidebar).
