Maxim Zmeyev (b. 1987, Saint Petersburg) is a visual artist based in Marseille, France. His practice uses in-game photography to examine how video game worlds produce images, behaviours, identities, and social models.
Before developing his research-driven artistic practice, Zmeyev worked as a photojournalist for regional and international news agencies, including Reuters and AFP, covering political and social upheavals across Russia and Eastern Europe. In 2021, he graduated from the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia in Moscow.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he left the country and was later granted refugee status in France.
His work has been shown internationally, including a solo presentation at Getxophoto in Getxo, Spain, and exhibitions at Internationale Photoszene Cologne, DongGang International Photo Festival, and the 1st International Biennale “Art for the Future”, as well as in France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Thailand, and Russia. His work has been published in Der Greif, Float Photo Magazine, F-Stop, and TIMES VII.
His works are held in the collection of the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, and in private European collections. In 2024, he received support from the Agency of Artists in Exile and the Institut français.
SOLO EXHIBITION
2024 Type 1.5.11., Getxophoto International Image Festival, Romo Kultur Etxea, Getxo (ES)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 Le Printemps de l'Art Contemporain, L'atelier des artistes en exil, Marseille (FR)
2025 Biennale de l'Image Tangible, Le 100 ECS, Paris (FR)
2025 Noviembre Fotográfico, FotoFac Galería, Fábrica de Arte Cubano, Havana (CU)
2025 One to One, Galerie Dix9, Paris (FR)
2025 (Made Anywhere), Fondation Fiminco, Paris (FR)
2025 In-Between Identities, MASA Gallery, Riga (LV)
2025 Art-O-Rama, Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille (FR)
2025 Artspace Bremerhaven, Alte Bürger, Bremerhaven (DE)
2025 DongGang International Photo Festival, DongGang Museum of Photography, Yeongwol (KR)
2025 Hybrid'Art — Contemporary Art Fair, Espace Gagarine, Port-de-Bouc (FR)
2024 Festival Visions d’exil CENSURE, PAC, Marseille (FR)
2024 Archifoto. Architecture en chantier, La Chambre, Strasbourg (FR)
2023 Internationale Photoszene Cologne Festival, Photography in Progress, Kunsträume der Michael Horbach Stiftung, Cologne (DE)
2023 Small File Photo Festival, The Photographers' Gallery, London (UK)
2023 Rome Art Week, Forgotten Place, Millepiani, Rome (IT)
2023 Paper, The European Center, Athens (GR)
2023 Uchi-Soto, SAGE Gallery, Bangkok (TH)
2023 Festival 9ph — Photographie et image contemporaine, Factatory, Lyon (FR)
2021 The 1st International Biennale Art for the Future, Multimedia Art Museum / MAMM, Moscow (RU)
2021 Blazar Young Contemporary Art Fair, Museum of Moscow, Moscow (RU)
2021 Exhibition of the nominees of the 2nd Moscow Art Prize, Zaryadye Park Media Center, Moscow (RU)
2021 Time Out of Joint, Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow (RU)
2021 Osmosis. New Aesthetics, Electromuseum, Moscow (RU)
2020 Peacetime, Gorky Park Museum, Moscow (RU)
2020 Creating an Environment, Art-Space-Hopping, Moscow (RU)
PUBLICATIONS
2025 Where Flowers Bloom 7, Space x Time (CH)
2025 Float Photo Magazine, Online group exhibition Whispering Shadows
2024 Der Greif, Artist Blog (DE)
2024 87 Gallery, TIMES VII: Shelter (UK)
2023 Der Greif, Guest Room (DE)
2023 See-zeen, Issue #8 (USA)
2023 F-Stop, Issue #119
RESIDENCIES
2024 L'atelier des artistes en exil, Marseille (FR)
GRANTS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
2024 Institut français, Support for Russian artists in exile (FR)
AWARDS
2020 Finalist, International Blurring the Lines, Paris (FR)
EDUCATION
2025–2026 CURAE 2025/26, PhMuseum, Online Masterclass on Curatorial Practice, led by Erik Kessels
2021 Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia, Moscow (RU)
2014 Saint Petersburg State University - Faculty of Journalism, Information Technology and Media Design, Saint Petersburg (RU)
I work inside video games as inside cities, archives, or administrations governed by software. These spaces are not simply backdrops to look at: they assign roles, regulate gestures, classify bodies, orient desires, and produce their own images before I ever photograph them.
In-game photography is my method of investigation. I extract, restage, and displace images from video game environments into material forms: prints, sequences, publications, installations, printed objects, display protocols. This movement off-screen does not try to make the virtual more real; it makes visible how these systems already manufacture reality: identities, habits of looking, historical fictions, models of consumption, forms of belonging.
From one project to another, I am less interested in the spectacle of simulated worlds than in the quiet operations that organise them: choosing a face, occupying a plot of land, producing evidence, consuming an image, following an instruction, taking a photograph already anticipated by a character or a machine. This is where my work finds its material: at the moment when an image stops being a surface and becomes a rule of the social game.
Biography
Artist Statement