After Us is a means of reconciling the banal as significant, the ordinary as mysterious, the close as appropriately alien, and the finite as a semblance of the infinite. In his words: “A collection of portraits of people I met on my way: relatives, loves, friends, colleagues I used to work with, places I visited. The oldest and the biggest part of my work. My direct experience of facing the reality around me, as brought back from the past by the waves of my memory, as a chain of bright, meaningful moments.” Seventeen original short stories accompany Bykov’s eighty-seven photographs.

Born in July 1967 in Kuibyshev, Russia, Sergey Bykov grew up in a small town in the southern Ural Mountains. Early in life, Bykov worked as a design engineer and then served as a monk in an Ashram monastery from 1990-1995 where he learned to prepare Indian vegetarian cuisine. It was while working as a vegetarian cook in the city of Ghent, Belgium that Bykov studied photography at the St. Lucas Academy from 2001-2005 and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp from 2008-2010. Bykov began taking photographs for what would eventually become After Us while studying at St. Lucas. Over the next decade of travel, endeavoring, and discovery, Bykov’s work gradually found its form. 

After Us, collectors EDITION WITH 1/40 15x22 cm. PRINT, Stamped AND NUMBERED BY THE Artist.