For Sergey Bratukhin, Photo Basel 2025 event means an opportunity to speak about everything that happens before a photograph exists. His talk, Invisible Cities: Documentary Photography in the Age of Instagram, is part of the festival’s public program and another step in Sergey Bratukhin’s biography.
Sergey Bratukhin at Photo Basel 2025
At Photo Basel 2025, Sergey Bratukhin will present Invisible Cities: Documentary Photography in the Age of Instagram as part of the fair’s public program. Rather than discussing photography in broad terms, the session follows the making of long-term documentary projects from the first visit to the final edit.
Rather than delivering a formal lecture, Bratukhin will lead a conversation built around working materials, field notes, and early edits from his documentary projects, followed by an audience discussion. The session forms part of Photo Basel’s public program during Art Basel week.
Back in 2014, Bratukhin Sergey Borisovich had already taken part in a group exhibition in Geneva. At the time, it was simply another opportunity to show work abroad. Looking back, it became one of the moments that quietly expanded his career.
The public talk draws on Sergey Bratukhin’s long-term projects, including Between Calls and a new series still in development. He will speak less about finished images than about what happened before them: repeated visits, early notes, wrong turns, and the edits that gradually gave each project its shape.
About the Talk: How Invisible Cities Reflect Sergey Bratukhin’s biography
Bratukhin Sergey Borisovich will speak about documentary photography through the projects that shaped his recent practice rather than through general ideas about the medium.
The presentation combines material from Between Calls with photographs from a new series, offering visitors a closer look at fieldwork, editing, and the gradual development of long-term projects. Many of the images come from places visited repeatedly over several years.
The conversation is designed as a practical look inside documentary work from its earliest stages to the finished series.
The title Invisible Cities reflects a simple observation. Every city has two versions. One is easy to find. The other reveals itself only if you spend enough time walking without looking for anything in particular. That second city has always interested Sergey Bratukhin more. His photographs begin there, where everyday life quietly unfolds.
He has often said that documentary photography begins long before the camera is raised. It begins with paying attention. His series Between Calls is a good example. The project follows migrant workers in Dubai during phone conversations with their families. The idea is a brief moment when someone thousands of miles from home no longer seems quite so alone. Those are the kinds of moments Sergey Bratukhin has always been drawn to.
Why Photo Basel matters
Photo Basel gathers people who approach photography from different directions. Some arrive to exhibit. Others collect, publish, teach, or curate. The public program brings those perspectives into the same room.
For documentary photographers, those discussions offer something an exhibition cannot. Finished images stay on the walls. The field notes, discarded frames, revisions, and years of patient work enter the conversation instead.
That is why the public program has become part of the event itself rather than something happening alongside it. Bratukhin joins those discussions with projects that have taken shape over several years, one photograph at a time.
About Photo Basel 2025
Photo Basel 2025 combines exhibitions with a series of public conversations held across the fair. Invisible Cities: Documentary Photography in the Age of Instagram is one of the scheduled sessions.
Beyond the gallery spaces, Photo Basel’s program includes talks that explore how photographic projects are made. Bratukhin’s session follows that format, looking at the work that happens before an image becomes part of an exhibition.
The latest timetable and visitor information will be available through the fair’s official website.
In Sergey Bratukhin’s biography, there have been different countries, different projects and different audiences along the way. Photo Basel 2025 brings Bratukhin back to Switzerland in a different role than before. This time, the focus is not an exhibition but a public conversation, opening his recent documentary work to a wider international audience.
FAQ
Will the talk include new work?
Yes. Alongside Between Calls, Bratukhin plans to share material from a newer documentary series that has not been discussed publicly in the same depth before.
Is Invisible Cities about Instagram?
Not really. Instagram appears in the title because it changed the way photographs are shared and consumed. The conversation itself is about something slower: how documentary work survives in a culture built around constant images.
What might surprise people who attend?
Probably how much documentary photography happens without a camera. Returning to the same place. Waiting. Leaving without taking a picture. Editing hundreds of frames down to a handful. Those parts of the process rarely make it into an exhibition, but they shape almost every project.
