Praise for Lost Boys
Lost Boys, powerHouse Books, Brooklyn, NY, 2006
Like Mogutin’s words, his images are provocative and raw, revolving around the fringes of Eastern European urban culture. Mogutin opens the door to a world of displaced people, underground cultures and economic instability. These are hard, beautiful images — and the subjects, like Mogutin, never shy away from the camera, staring straight at the lens without hesitation.
Mogutin’s photographs have engaged both international and domestic audiences. [They] move us to interrogate our cultural notions of romance, shame, fantasy, and love. The cosmopolitan renegades that inhabit Mogutin’s world of urban youth culture vary from the poetic to the downright obscene.
Cordelia Chadwick, Juxtapoz
[Mogutin’s photos] are frankly sexual, but they also reflect very real economic and political realities. Let’s leave the fear to the authorities and embrace him as an ardent outlaw.
Ken Miller, V Magazine
His subjects in Lost Boys are insolent, exuberant, isolated, and blatantly sexual, and their candidness is proof that Mogutin’s photographic power lies as much in the framing of the images as it does in putting his subjects at such ease that they behave as if no camera were around.
Matthew Breen, Out
Putting into the limelight the hedonistic spirit and sexual adventurousness of a post-communist Russian youth, Mogutin works in the documentary and raw style of photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans and Terry Richardson. Smelly sneakers, cucumbers and booze are all party of this hip orgy, which apparently echoes many of the author’s sexual fantasies. The “art of shocking” would be one of the best ways to define his work.
Stephane Gaboue, Anthem
These are authentic images of comrades on the global rough-sex scene without cliché embellishments.
Lee Carter, V Man
[Lost Boys] images are charged both erotically and sociologically. At the same time, there’s an almost playful air evident in Lost Boys, a deliberate attempt by Mogutin to show what he calls “a different Russia—one that is colorful, sexy, and full of crazy energy that you don’t find anywhere else.” For all its unbridled “kink,” Lost Boys, with its cherubic athletes, drunken party boys, and posturing cadets, has an innocent side.
Dan Avery, The Advocate
Once you get over the nudity, [Mogutin’s] work is consistently good.
Richard Gray, 10 Men