Valery Nistratov works in the tradition of art-documentary photography. Between 1993 and 2000 he spent most of his time travelling, including a journey from the source to the mouth of the Volga during which he documented everyday life in the towns and villages along its banks, drawn especially to surviving pagan traditions and rituals in villages of the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Mari El Republic; his photographs of the village of Shutilovo inspired the writer Vladimir Sorokin to write the screenplay for the film Four, later shot in that same village. Forest-Steppe is the outcome of twelve years of this work, structured as a photo-essay that asks what the true nature of the Russian person might be. "These aren't pictures you can hang on your wall and simply get on with your life," Nistratov has said. "There's pain in them. I keep photographing, discovering my country - but it's also my country, and so it's my pain too."