Total Theater is a personal investigation into the layered identities that exist within the world of theater.
The project began in 2023, when the artist returned to a theatrical environment twenty-five years after studying acting.
Although he ultimately chose a different path in life, that early experience left a lasting mark on his personality and perception. Returning to the theater as an external observer allowed him to reconsider those memories from a distance and explore how identity is shaped within this unique space.
The photographs were made at the experimental theater Total Theater in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Rather than focusing solely on the stage, the project observes the entire ecosystem of theatrical life. Rehearsals, script readings, quiet moments backstage, and the tired departure of actors after a performance all become part of a continuous cycle. In this environment, the line between the stage and the audience gradually dissolves, revealing theater not as a single moment of performance but as an ongoing state of transformation.
What fascinated him most were the subtle layers that exist within each person involved in the theater. Every individual carries multiple personas: the way they see themselves, the way they wish to be seen, and, for actors, the characters they temporarily inhabit. The theatrical world therefore appears as a stratified image, similar to evening mist over a river where silhouettes emerge but never fully reveal themselves. It becomes difficult to distinguish where the real person ends and the performed identity begins.
A year after completing the photographs, when he returned to the theater in 2024 to work on the photobook, he discovered that everything had changed. The place he had documented no longer existed in the same way. This realization transformed the project into something more dramatic than initially expected. The book ultimately reflects not only the world of the theater but also the fragile and transient nature of memory itself.
About Anatoly Suzdaltsev
Anatoly Suzdaltsev is a visual artist and photographer born in 1980 in the South Ural and currently based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He is a student at the Fotografika Academy.
His work constructs enigmatic visual worlds that merge documentary observation with fictional narratives and imagined characters. Working primarily within urban and art photography, he explores transitional and liminal spaces across Central Asia. He works with 35mm film alongside experimental tools such as photogrammetry and handheld scanning devices, documenting textures and objects in ways that expand the boundaries of traditional photographic practice.
Suzdaltsev approaches photography from a deeply mystical perspective, seeing the medium as a space where reality and imagination intersect. The photobook and the zine are central to his practice, which he regards as intimate forms of storytelling and artistic experimentation.
His projects have been presented in exhibitions and festivals across Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Germany, Serbia, Hungary, Japan, and Malaysia. His self-published zines are held in several collections, including Zone of the Zine, GARAGE, NIZINA, the Asia Art Archive, and the Carlos Fontes Library. [Official Website]
