Born in Samara in 1988, Arseniy Kotov grew up in an urban landscape consisting of standardised housing blocks and industrial towers. He has been taking photographs of city landscapes since he was a teenager. At the age of 25 he decided to hitchhike across Russia and then on to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. During 2016-19 Arseniy Kotov visited all of the post-soviet republics, where he photographed more than two hundred cities. Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell have been publishing critically acclaimed books on Soviet culture since 2004 with their Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia. More recent titles include Godless Utopia, Spomenik Monument Database and Soviet Bus Stops.