Alexei Sovertkov’s Photographs Inspired by Renaissance Portraits

It has been said that the Renaissance witnessed the rediscovery of the individual and is considered the first great age of portraiture. Inspired by master artists like Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Holbein, Moscow based photographer Alexei Sovertkov creates magnificent portrayals of the people around him. In his series titled “Digiclassicism”, Sovertkov presents himself and his close friends in digital portraits that remix historical depictions. His photographs share ideals of the individual and concepts of beauty with that of their Dutch and Flemish Renaissance counterparts, their distant gazes and delicately modeled features expressing hints of an interior life.

While many of the images are purely classical, others feature a combination of old and new- instead of holding quill pens, model ships, and other motifs of the period, some of Sovertkov’s subjects hold items like a laptop, stylus pen, chocolate bar, and nail file. Some of their costumes have been updated as well, where the photographer dresses them in designer label shawls and bath towels, wrapped around their hair and shoulders as if they were luxurious finery. Sovertkov’s portraits are no longer the types of images reserved for the social elite, presenting regular people in an esteemed light where they assume a new importance.