01 — editorial
Editorial & long-form
Magazine commissions, photo essays, brand journalism. Eight-to-thirty-two-frame stories. I work with one art director and one writer — no committees.
ForMagazines · publishing houses · cultural brands
Ilya Volkov
"I photograph the half-second before the room remembers it's being watched."
01 / 04
PORTRAIT · BERLIN · 2024
Selected works · 2018 — 2026
Six stories
Six stories
worth telling slowly.
A fuller archive of 184 stories on request
From the archive
A few frames,
A few frames,
printed at scale.
FRAME · 04250mm · f/2.0 · 1/125
After the wedding · No. 04VOGUE IT · 2026
FRAME · 01185mm
Loro Piana · FW252025
FRAME · 00335mm
Margiela Atelier2023
FRAME · 08724mm · large-format
Snow Mountain Stories · HokkaidoMONOCLE · 2024
The studio
A slow camera in a fast room.
I grew up in a town outside St. Petersburg where film was something you ordered from a magazine. The cameras came in a wooden box, three weeks late, with the manual in three languages.
Today the studio is in Berlin-Mitte, sometimes Paris, sometimes Tokyo. I shoot on a Leica M11, a Mamiya 7, a phone borrowed from someone at lunch. The medium is never the point.
I'm here to wait for the moment everyone forgot was happening.
Born1989 · St. Petersburg, RU
StudiedVGIK Moscow → ECAL Lausanne
CurrentlyBerlin-Mitte studio · @ilya.volkov
LanguagesEN · DE · RU · FR · (passable) JP
Selected commissions · 2018 — 2026
Vogue Italia
Loro Piana
Monocle
Hermès
Margiela
The New York Times
Apple
Aesop
Commissions · 2026
Three kinds of work.
02 — commercial
Commercial & campaign
Brand campaigns, look-books, e-commerce. Up to twelve shoot days per quarter. Studio in Mitte, on-location anywhere. I bring two assistants and a stylist.
ForFashion houses · luxury & lifestyle brands
03 — private
Private portraits
For people who don't want a wedding photographer. One afternoon, one location, twelve final frames in archival print. By application only — five per year.
ForFamilies · founders · five sessions / year
Ilya is the rare photographer who comes into a room and somehow turns the volume down. The images arrive a week later, and you realise he was the only one paying full attention.
Sara D'AngeloPicture editor · Vogue Italia · 2026
2026
World Press Photo
Singles · Portrait · 3rd
2025
Sony WPA
Professional Editorial
2024
D&AD
Yellow Pencil · Campaign
2023
Lucie Awards
Discovery of the Year
Limited prints & letters
A few prints,
A few prints,
a few letters a year.
Twelve archival prints per year — fifty editions each, signed and numbered. Plus four longer letters about what I'm reading, watching and shooting.
- 50 editions per print
- Hahnemühle Photo Rag · 308 g
- Signed, numbered, stamped
- Shipped from Berlin in a tube
Want me in the room?
One email a day to studio@ilyavolkov.com — Madeleine reads each, replies within 48 hours. We don't take more than four commissions a month.
Email · studio studio@ilyavolkov.com