Photozhir

What it is

Photozhir (Фотожир) is a Russian-language Telegram channel about photography. Its bio says it "gently touches on everything to do with photography" and lists three strands: community, inspiration and challenges. In practice the backbone is posts about photographers and their series: a handful of images plus text explaining what's going on in the frames and what the project is about.

It has more than twenty thousand subscribers, posts get around two thousand views, and something new appears almost every day.

Why we picked it

Because the captions go well beyond "photographer X, nice shot". Take three posts from a single week. The first is about Roger Ballen, an American photographer who has lived and worked in South Africa since the early 1980s. The channel explains how human faces almost vanished from his pictures after 2003, replaced by drawings, found objects and sculpture-like elements, and walks through Asylum of the Birds, shot in a Johannesburg house where people lived and birds flew freely.

The second is about Trish Morrissey. At first glance — ordinary family beach snaps. But Morrissey approaches strangers, puts on one woman's clothes, usually the mother's, and takes her place in the group, while the woman photographs her own family to Morrissey's instructions. The third covers Eiji Ohashi's Roadside Lights: lost in a Hokkaido blizzard, he found his way by the glow of a roadside vending machine, and that started a series on lonely machines in empty landscapes.

There's hands-on work too: the author shot street photography at Moscow's Preobrazhensky market with fellow photographer Misha Kepkin and posted both the pictures and a recording of their conversation. Occasional ads and charity posts appear, but the main feed is about photography.

Where to start

• Read the Trish Morrissey post; it shows how a concept changes the meaning of an ordinary picture.
• Find the piece on Roger Ballen and Asylum of the Birds.
• Look at Eiji Ohashi's Roadside Lights — a short story with strong images.
• Scroll to the Preobrazhensky market challenge if you shoot street photography yourself.
• Note down names from the posts and look up their books and sites; the channel works as a study list.

Who it's for

Photographers who want references beyond their social media feed. Photo school students looking for examples of conceptual series. People who love photography as an art form but don't know which names to start with. The text is in Russian, yet the images carry a lot even through a translator, and the posts are short enough for a commute.

Quick answers

What's it about? Photographers and their series, the ideas behind the pictures, plus photo challenges and community.

How active is it? Posts appear almost daily; the channel has over 20,000 subscribers.

Are there ads? Yes, the bio lists a contact for ads and collaborations, but most posts are about photography.