Mokhorev is a young, but widely known master of photographic art. There is a mark of a very special kind of courage, both cruel and kind, on his pictures; they are almost as documental as news photographs forcefully reclaimed from the ineluctable stream of life, yet their composition is meticulously precise and, if not stage-like, at least spotlessly complete with the kind of completeness wherein inadvertency is no more than a component, an echo, a spark.

He is not a creator of abstract worlds of plasticity; his photographs are akin to neorealistic films or miserabliste art where documentalism meets ruthless grotesque. The L'humanite critic who wrote about Mokhorev's photography rightfully invoked the term "gignolle" - a typically French coinage denoting a paradoxical blend of cruel brutality and sick humor. Mokhorev's characters are St. Petersburg teenagers. Amusing and snotty in their deprivation, they are the proud and fatigued denizens of murky courtyards, dark stairways and squalid communal housing. Together, they live a mature life of dispossessed, lonesome, yet essentially innocent creatures. Although they amply indulge in all the temptations of adulthood, they grow old without really growing up. Devoid of innuendos, ambiguities and vague suggestions, yet powerful and usually brusque, Mokhorev's trademark style goes very well with his quest for bitter, cathartic honesty.

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