‘The only place nudity was tolerated’: stripping off on Soviet beaches – in pictures | Art and design

Nikolay Bakharev was born in Siberia in the late 1940s, when artistic expression was strictly regulated. As the Soviet Union began to unravel in the early 1980s, he traveled to lake beaches, such as Cheryomushki, where workers and families gathered to relax. These beaches were among the few public spaces in the USSR where any form of nudity was tolerated. The intimate, unguarded portraits Bakharev took captured parents embracing their children, couples pressed close and friends drinking in the afternoon light. Cheryomushki is available to purchase through Stanley/Barker