A camera did not arrive in anton sheyn’s life as part of a settled plan. He had just left medical studies shortly before graduation and was unsure what would come next. A month later, a friend gave him an Olympus mju II with a broken flash. He took it on a journey around Europe and came home with photographs he describes as badly composed and oddly focused. The results were imperfect, but receiving those first scans by email made him want to continue.
That curiosity led him back to a camera he already owned. His uncle, who had worked in a photo lab, had given him a Lubitel 166b when he was five. For a child, its two glass eyes and unfamiliar shape made it more toy than instrument. It spent roughly twenty years in storage before Anton decided to find out how it worked.
Two frames were enough
Bringing the Lubitel back into use meant learning the basics of aperture and exposure, as well as finding his way around a viewfinder that had once seemed incomprehensible. Of the twelve photographs on his first roll, only two came out reasonably exposed. For Anton, that was enough encouragement.
The story matters because it leaves room for a beginning that is neither fluent nor impressive. Photography offered him something to explore at a time when another direction had ended. The camera did not have to produce a successful roll before it could become important.
Street photography on the way to work
Originally from Riga and living in Berlin since 2023, Anton now carries a camera through the ordinary movements of the day. Train journeys and waits on platforms have become regular opportunities to photograph. He is drawn to places where people gather: stations, flea markets and terraces, as well as brief encounters of light, reflection and shape.
Sometimes he shoots from the hip or without looking through the viewfinder. At other times he experiments with a longer exposure. These are ways of loosening his own decision-making, rather than a claim that technique is unimportant. He explicitly values technical and compositional skills; his current interest is in trusting the impulse to press the shutter before explaining it.
He calls this preference “zero control”. It describes how he wants the act of photographing to feel: open, enjoyable and less constrained by deciding in advance whether an image will be good enough.
The people who keep returning
Close friends remain recurring subjects, even if moving to Berlin means he photographs them less often. Visits to Riga add new frames to a collection of familiar people and neighbourhoods. Alongside those personal continuities, he has noticed another recurring subject: small human figures set against large building facades, or people appearing in windows and on balconies.
Some photographs grow more significant because returning becomes difficult. In February 2020, he visited his aunt and uncle in Dnipro, a city he had known through childhood summers but had not revisited as an adult. Photographing its industrial surroundings gave him a different perspective on a remembered place. Looking back after the pandemic and the later full-scale war, those pictures carry a weight he could not have fully anticipated when he made them.
What comes back from the lab
Anton enjoys the distance between making an exposure and receiving the scan. If a roll has stayed in the camera for some time, he may have forgotten what is on it. Thirty-six frames can bring together people, places and events that would never be so close in everyday life.
One damaged roll also changed how he looked at the material. When the film tore during rewinding, he spent repeated sessions in a dark bathroom trying to get it back into the cassette. The film became scratched and wrinkled. He expected to have spoiled it, but liked the marks when he saw the results. The experience taught him patience and made him more aware that a photograph could be affected physically, as well as through the original exposure.
That is an account of a result he valued, rather than a method he recommends repeating. What stayed with him was the surprise of finding something worth keeping where he had expected a failure.
Self-portraits and a visual diary of Berlin
Berlin initially felt overwhelming. Its constant activity and variety offered more possibilities than he knew how to approach. Over time, he has become more comfortable photographing in the street, trying night scenes and allowing a chance conversation with a stranger to become part of making a portrait.
In the winter before this interview, he began making one or two self-portraits on each roll. A discarded mirror, a window or his own shadow can be enough. He does not think of this as a formal project so much as a visual memoir: a way of finding himself in the city.
Next, he wants to learn more about developing and scanning, work with studio lighting, and explore documentary projects or a small zine. The ambitions are growing from a habit he already has: taking a camera along on an ordinary day. Stations, windows and discarded mirrors give that day a place in an ongoing visual diary.
Follow anton sheyn’s visual diary on Instagram, @sviterkolit.
Questions from the interview
How did anton sheyn begin photographing on film?
A friend gave him an Olympus mju II with a broken flash after he left medical studies. He later returned to a Lubitel 166b his uncle had given him as a child. Two reasonably exposed frames from an early roll encouraged him to keep learning.
Does he plan his street photographs in advance?
He currently prefers to follow what catches his attention on walks and commutes. He values technical skills, but wants to leave room for instinct, chance encounters and pictures he cannot explain before making them.
How is his visual diary of Berlin taking shape?
Alongside streets, friends and people framed by buildings, he has been making one or two self-portraits on each roll. Reflections in windows, discarded mirrors and shadows let him place himself inside the city he is getting to know.
Keep exploring
For a different street photography practice built around repeated walks, read Grégoire Huret on walking, chance and returning to the streets.
Based on a written interview for Developing Stories, Berlin Photo Studio’s series about the people and experiences behind photographs. Interview and editing: Emiliano Vittoriosi / Berlin Photo Studio.
