Олег Климов (1)

July 31, 2026

Oleg Klimov was born in 1964 in the settlement of Bely Yar in the Tomsk Oblast, USSR.
Based in the Baltic Sea, Russia.

Another legend in the ranks of the Noga Creative Union.
Oleg Klimov — is one of Russia’s leading documentary photographers, war correspondents and pioneers of independent journalism. Having started out as one of the first independent stringers in the USSR, he co-founded an agency in 1995 that stood at the origins of private photojournalism. Over the course of his career, Klimov has collaborated with the world’s leading publications, including NRC-Handelsblad, Time, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde and Ogoniok magazine. His photographic practice is rooted in many years of visual research and a rejection of superficial capture of events in favour of creating long-term historical chronicles that reveal the inner drama of the human condition through the real circumstances of personal lives and global shifts exerting pressure from without.

Witnesses of the Time

Klimov’s first series on NCU from the photo album ‘Heritage of an Empire’ depicts a snapshot of the times when he came of age as a photographer, witnessing the end of the Soviet regime firsthand. His personal and professional development coincided with perestroika and glasnost in the late 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the turbulent reforms that reshaped the country in the years that followed.