"Before major elections, political actors reassure themselves of their own purpose at federal party conventions. More than anything else, these events are about producing images to be broadcast in the evening news. The effort that goes into the staging is correspondingly enormous: sets are built, tonnes of cables are laid, sound and lighting are controlled down to the last detail. Every shot has to land. The parties and their prominent representatives want – and need – to look good. What they failed to reckon with was Nikita Teryoshin. Who is going to tell him, the photographer, which images are to be produced here? Over a period of ten years, Teryoshin attends the major events of all democratic parties represented in the German Bundestag. He photographs initially on his own initiative, and later also on assignment for Der Spiegel. His images document the end of Angela Merkel's chancellorship, the jockeying for her succession, and the ongoing reshuffling of personnel across shifting coalitions of opposition and government up to the present day. The photographer's true subject, however, is the mediated staging of politics. Where these productions seek to conceal the fact that political action is merely being simulated, they develop a rich comic potential. For it is also possible to subvert such stagings – and in doing so, to make them visible." — Mathias Königschulte taz picture desk