CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY

CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY
Stas Namin is a musician and composer, a producer, an artist and photographer; one of the founders of Russian rock music and show business. He directs and produces theatre and cinema, and is involved with and behind numerous social and innovative projects.

 

1970s
In late 1969, Namin formed a new band, The Flowers, which later became the first national supergroup, which “provoked the country’s curiosity” according to Itogi magazine (issue no. 10/ July 17th, 2010). Stas Namin becomes a household name in the beginning of the 70s, when record label Melodiya released The Flowers’ first vinyl record. During the last 50 years, the group has sold more than 60 million records, despite being originally banned by state media and unrecognized by authorities right up until Perestroika. Several generations grew up on songs by Namin and his group The Flowers (“Starlet”, “Early to Farewell”, “Summer Night”, “Yurmala”, “Nostalgie”), including his hit song, “We Wish You Happiness”, which has remained the Russia’s favourite for over 40 years.

1980s to 90s

With Mikhail Gorbachov’s rise to power and the beginning of Perestroika in 1986, Namin and David Woollcombe (Great Britain) organised the first Russian-American project — a musical Peace Child, as well as the first ever live TV linkup between Russia and the US, and a 45 day tour of the musical and group The Flowers throughout the United States and Canada. The Flowers performed in the most prestigious venues of Northern America in September and October 1986. In December, the band participated in the Japan Aid charity festival in Tokyo, organized by Peter Gabriel. Since then, the Stas Namin band has made a world tour in three years, performing in more than fifty countries on all continents.
In 1987, Namin founded the country’s first private production company — the Stas Namin Centre (SNC) with location in the Green Theatre of Gorky Park. On its territory — an open-air stage and amphitheater for eight thousand seats, where concerts of Russian and foreign stars have been held for over thirty years, a theatre hall for two hundred seats, a theatre hall for two hundred seats, photo and video studios, a recording studio and much more.
The Centre was responsible for launching such national stars as: Garik Sukachev and Brigada C, Dmitry Revyakin and Kalinov Most, Sergey Mazaev and Moral Code, Alexander Vasilyev and Splin and others. Here, in 1987, Namin created the Gorky Park band and in the late eighties made it popular around the world.

 

In the late eighties, Namin created a sports agency that opened a window to the world to the Soviet athletes. Thanks to it Vyacheslav Fetisov and Valery Kasatonov signed direct contracts with the NHL. Andrey Chesnokov and other Soviet tennis players were among those, who also worked through this agency.

 

Namin organized the first rock ‘n’ pop festivals, including the Festival of Pop Music in Armenia (1981), rock-festival Musicians for Peace (1988), Moscow Peace Festival at the Luzhniki stadium (1989) with international headliners; One World Festival (1990, 1995 and 1997), and  Rock from the Kremlin (1992), which exposed thousands of Soviet teenagers to real rock and roll for the first time. He created some of the first private enterprises inside the USSR including: a recording studio in 1986, a record label in 1990, a concert and talent agency in 1987, a design studio in 1987, a model agency, and a fashion theatre (1988), a radio station (1991), a TV company (1992), and a cultural magazine (1995) and more, thus breaking the state monopoly and setting the scene for the start of uncensored “Russian show business.  Namin created the first non-state Moscow Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in 1989, produced the first ice show Moscow-On-Ice in 1991, and created the first in Russia repertoire theatre for musicals in 1999.
Moscow Music Festival of Peace. 1989

2000s to 2020s

The International Russian Film Festival (RIFF), initiated and organized by Namin in 2003, broadened its scope to become the Festival of Russian Culture Russian Nights — known as The Russian Night Festival. In April 2004, it was held at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and in October at major venues in Manhattan. For three years, Namin has been running a series of Russian Nights festivals in the USA, Germany, China and South Korea. The Tower Award goes to writers Ray Bradbury and Gore Vidal, artist Peter Max, and directors Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, producers Peter Hoffman and Roger Corman, actors Shirley MacLaine, Sharon Stone, Nastassja Kinski, Dustin Hoffman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley and others. 
At the beginning of the 2000s, Namin shifted his attention mostly to personal creative activities that included music, theatre, cinema, painting, photography and more.

Theatre

Namin is the artistic director, stage director and producer for the Moscow Music and Drama Theatre, which he founded in 1999.

 Within the first fifteen years, the theatre formed a repertoire with plays of nearly every genre. Each member of this uniquely versatile troupe is a professional actor, singer and dancer. The versatility has allowed the theatre to find not only its style, which became evident starting from the earliest performances, but also its own language of expression.

The Stas Namin theatre debuted with a Russian version of Hair, a legendary American anti-war hippie musical. The first performances at the Estrada Theatre coincided with the beginning of the Second Chechen War. At the press conference, the producers were accused of pacifism and lack of patriotism. Similar charges had been made against the original American version in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.

In 2008, the Namin theatre took part in the 40th anniversary celebrations of the first Broadway performance of Hair in New York City. It also appeared among the world’s top five troupes in a documentary on this play. Today, the Moscow Hair is the world’s ‘longest’: it has been performed for twenty years.

The theatre’s second show was a production of the iconic version of Jesus Christ Superstar, the only rock opera allowed to be performed at biblical sites of the holy city. It is also the only one played both in Russian and English in Russia.

Along with classical drama shows, such as Cosmos, based on Vasily Shushkin’s short stores, and NYC. The ‘80s. Us!, based on memoirs of an artist Mihail Chemiakin, the theatre has presented plays that, instead of conventional storylines, feature images combining poetry, music and choreography. The most prominent example is a reconstruction of Victory over the Sun, an avant-garde Russian opera that premiered in 1913. The show, dedicated to the centenary of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, toured Europe’s best venues: Basel (Switzerland), Paris (France), Ravenna (Italy), Thessaloniki (Greece), etc. It was praised by critics and the media.

That show was followed by two song-and-dance pieces: The Dweller of the Heights  with lyrics by Velimir Khlebnikov and a jazz rock score by Alexei Khvostenko and Auktyon; and S-Quark based on a symphony of the same title by Namin. The scenic design of the latter faithfully reproduces Fragile, a painting by an avant-garde artist Vasily Kandinsky. In the autumn of 2018, the show caused a sensation at the festival of contemporary experimental theatre in Egypt. 

The troupe has also explored contemporary theatre — in Unbearably Long Embrace based on a play by Ivan Vyrypaev as well as in Breath of Time and Killed by Domesticity by a rap poet Oleg Grouz.

Nowadays, the main concept of the theatre is expressivity based on a synergy of genres. It can be achieved thanks to the actors’ advanced acting, dancing and singing skills as well as due to such state-of-the art technology as virtual scenic design, panoramic video projection and 3D audio.

Namin’s musicals The Snow Queen and The Little Prince have been popular with young audiences for years. The shows were reinvented using new projection technologies. The actors are performing live within a 360° video projection.

Another musical for children, played to a full house in Moscow and often performed in other cities, is Town Musicians of Bremen. This original version was produced under a guidance of the composer, Gennady Gladkov.

Since 2011, the theatre has offered drama classes for children. Kids aged three to seventeen study acting skills, artistic diction and movement, singing and choreography. In the spring of 2019, the students brought their show to the Youth Space, a festival in Sochi, and won a prize for Best Art and Music Direction. Over the years, more than a thousand children attended the classes.

Photography

Stas Namin has long been recognized as a world class photographer in Russia and  abroad. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world. Between the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s, his photographic works have been featured in shows at the Bolshoi Manezh and the Central House of Artists in Moscow and at other prestigious galleries and museums around the world. In the State Russian Museum, he participated in exhibitions Born to Crawl and No Glamour. More recently he completed a 15 year photo project The Magic of Venus, a tribute to the phenomenon of childbirth and curated by art experts at the State Russian Museum.

In 2001, the State Russian Museum (St Petersburg) held Namin’s personal photo exhibition and published his photo album.

While Namin’s first photographs were shot exclusively on film, and the lack of computer processing and retouching was conceptual for him, from the 2010s onwards he began to work extensively with a digital camera. He is engaged in landscape, studio, and panoramic shooting, experimenting in color and black and white photography. What concerns his projects «Computer Games» and «Matriarchy», they are already fully built on creativity in digital technologies.

Paintings & Graphics

Namin has practiced fine art for more than 15 years, and his paintings and graphics have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Russia and abroad.  In recent years he has created a series of portraits; Italian, Armenian and Jerusalem series. In 2014, Namin was awarded honorary membership of the Russian Academy of Arts. In 2016, the Academy presented his solo exhibition Inside Out; the catalogue was prefaced by art experts Alexander Borovsky and Victor Miziano. In 2017, Namin had a solo exhibition in Yerevan, where he was made an honorary member of the Armenian Union of Artists and his works became a part of the permanent exhibition in the national gallery of Armenia. In 2018, Namin’s works were included in the exhibition Red Gates / Against the Flow — a gigantic project by the Russian Academy of Arts, in which more than 350 artists took part, among them Konstantin Khudyakov, Zurab Tsereteli, Tatiana Nazarenko, Natalia Nesterova and others.  The show was launched in Saratov, home to one of the oldest art museums in Russia, and continued through several towns along the Volga river and culminated in Moscow. Namin’s works were included in yet another annual catalogue volume. In 2019, Namin became a member of the Creative Union of Russian Artists and braught together Andrei Bartenev, Anton Adasinsky, Petlyura, Dmitry Krymov, Vladimir Klavikho, Hermes Zaigott and German Vinogradov in an art group The Dark Side of the Moon.
A joint exhibition of Bob Dylan (Face Value) and Stas Namin (Inside Out) was planned for 2020 at the State Russian Museum, but it was postponed due to pandemic restrictions.

In the spring of 2021 (4 March to 18 April), Russia’s oldest art museum named after Alexander Radishchev in Saratov opened Namin’s personal exhibition ‘Winged Century Flies…’.  It presents different techniques and directions in which the artist works. In addition to classical oil paintings and graphics (works from the series ‘Armenia’, ‘Italy’, ‘New York’, created under the impression of travelling around the world), this is applied art, photo art, etc.

Films

In 1993, Stas Namin (general producer) and Viktor Ginzburg (director) created ‘The Restless Garden’,  a film about the sexual revolution in the USSR. It is based on performances and stories by residents of the Stas Namin Centre, set in the Neskuchny Garden in Gorky Park. The film won 12 international film awards.

On April 5, 2021 the film was presented at the Artdocfest — International Documentary Film Festival in Moscow.

Also, in the early nineties Stas Namin as a general producer and Boris Yukhananov as a director made a documentary ‘Moscow Underground’. The film explored the alternative art scene in Moscow of that time.

In 2007 Namin becomes the producer of the documentary film ‘Ogan Duryan. The Profession of High Senses’, created by an international team of the maestro’s fans. In 2010 he produces a film ‘Grigoriy Arutyunov. First Secretary of the Second Republic’, about the leader of Armenia from 1937 to 1953, who actually created the current architectural look of Yerevan and built many important buildings in Armenia — he was popularly known as Grigor the Builder.

In March 2012, Namin travels to northern India, the places of pilgrimage of The Beatles, visits ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples and monasteries, meditates in the Himalayas and gives a sitar concert at the Krishna-Balarama Temple in Vrindavan. Throughout the trip, Namin never parted with his camcorder. Upon his return to Moscow, he used the footage he had shot to create the travel-movie ‘Magic India’.

A few documentaries that Namin made while travelling in Africa at the end of the 1990s also belong to the travel-movie genre: they depict a world of wild nature, life of indigenous tribes and the endless expanses of the continent.

The documentary film Free to Rock (US, 2015), explored the role that rock music in the Cold War and was co-produced by Namin and along with director Jim Brown. Free to Rock premiered at Georgetown University and at the Council for Foreign Relations at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. In addition, it was presented at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, OH, the legendary GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, at the Moscow International Film Festival, in Berlin, Paris and other European and American cities. In 2017, the film had its world TV premiere on the PBS Television network (US) and was distributed on DVD in 2017.

Namin and Jim Brown also collaborated on a documentary film Real Cuba (2017) that examines happiness and longevity amongst the Cuban people. It received rave reviews at a number of cinema festivals (Cuba, USA, Armenia and others).

A number of documentaries, namely Ancient Temples of Armenia (2016) featuring Catholicos Garegin II; and Conversation with Ernst Neizvestny (2016) — Namin shot with his son Artem, a director and cameraman.

In 2019, Stas co-produced the film Anastas Mikoyan from the cycle Country of Unions.  Forgotten Grandees, created by Star Media for the First TV Channel Russia. The film tells about the role this outstanding politician played in giving the Soviet Union the upper hand in military operations, unbelievable industrial achievements, and in political battles.

Namin’s documentaries are screened and win awards at festivals and special screenings.

In July 2018, Stas Namin’s documentaries Real Cuba and Ancient Temples of Armenia take part in the Golden Apricot international film festival in Yerevan and Gyumri, Armenia. In Gyumri, Namin’s films open the festival programme.

In October 2018, Real Cuba is recognised as Best Documentary at the Open Window International Film Festival (India).

In 2020 Namin becomes the winner of the Petropol Art Prize (St. Petersburg) for his documentaries ‘Ancient Temples of Armenia’ and ‘Conversation with Ernst Neizvestny’.

Ancient Temples of Armenia official trailer

The Real Cuba official trailer

 A Conversation with Neizvestny official trailer

Free to Rock official trailer

Symphonic Music

In 1989, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra was established at the Stas Namin Centre.
The orchestra was working in two directions. The first is Symphony Classics, a classical symphonic repertoire (Ravel ‘Bolero’; Mozart ‘Requiem’; Berlioz ‘Fantastique Symphony’) performed at traditional academic venues — conservatoire halls, philharmonic societies and so on. The second is a rock direction, in which the orchestra performed under the name Moscow Symphony Rocks with both classical symphonic works and works from the repertoire of world rock stars — Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, etc. It performed solo or together with soloists and bands using all the effects inherent to rock music: lasers, video installations, sound reinforcement, pyrotechnics, etc. Moscow Symphony Rocks gave open air concerts, performed at stadiums, toured the UK with Electric Light Orchestra II, participated in festivals in China, South Korea.
In 2001, OGAN Duryan’narc was invited to become the Principal conductor of MSO. Maestro Durjan was a French conductor who cooperated in his youth with Herbert von Karajan, had an inspiring experience of working with more than one hundred orchestras around the world and was awarded the title of Knight Emeritus of Arts and Literature by the French Government. During his European tour, critics rated Maestro as Toscanini of Eastern Europe.
Fall in St. Petersburg. Symphonic suite by Stas Namin. Moscow International Performing Arts Center, Svetlanov Hall. 2014
In 2011, Namin completed his eight-part symphonic suite Fall in St Petersburg, which he began way back in the 90s. In 2012, a DVD and CD were released, from the first rendition in Moscow International Performing Arts Center. In 2016, German composer and pianist Ratko Delorko created and recorded a piano version, and in 2018, famous Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky did a piano arrangement for two of the parts and included them in his own concert program.

In 2016, Namin finished his first symphony Centuria S Quark. In the same year it was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and released on CD by British-US company Parma Recordings (Navona record label). In 2017, the Russian National Orchestra performed a signature edit by a prominent conductor, composer and piano player Mikhail Pletnev, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Together with Aram Khachaturian’s Symphony no. 3 it was shown on Russia’s Culture channel on the Armenia’s genocide Remembrance Day.

World Music

In 2002, The Flowers with Sergei Starostin recorded the album Russian Village Songs, which combines authentic Russian village songs with modern rock versions, while retaining their authentic spirit and image.

 In 2011, Namin recorded a double album of ethnic music One World Music Freedom, featuring musicians of India, Armenia, Israel, Palestine, Great Britain, Africa and others. The album included recordings of a duet with Zhivan Gasparyan, a guitar improvisation with Masai tribes and more.

Also in 2011, the Moscow International House of Music presented Namin’s ‘Fusion Raga’ — a tribute to George Harrison, on sitar and accompanied by Indian and Russian musicians and a symphony orchestra.

In 2012, Namin played the sitar at a concert in Vrindavan (India) and recorded a triple album Meditation, with guest appearances by musicians from India and other countries. In 2018, to mark 150 years since the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by the invitation of the Embassy of India, Namin recorded Gandhi’s favorite song  ‘Saints Are Not Born’ on the sitar and made a video clip that became hugely popular after being shown on Indian national TV.

Rock Music

In the mid-1990s, Namin and guest musicians recorded Kamasutra, his solo album of eight art-rock guitar improvisations. Namin dedicated this work to his friend, Frank Zappa, a famous composer and multi-instrumentalist who passed away in 1993. The album was recorded in a single take, without overdubbing; the playing time of the disc equals the length of the recording session.
In the same period, Namin and stars of the 1960-70s brought out a blues and rock ‘n roll double album called Dinosaurs. One disc was produced in a studio, featuring Noel Redding (Jimi Hendrix Experience), Eric Bell (Thin Lizzy), Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake), Herman Rarebell (Scorpions) as well as Russian rock musicians. The second disc was recorded live at the Dinosaurs Festival, with pioneering bands of Russian rock such as Sokol (The Tercel), Skify (The Scythians), Tsvety (The Flowers), Mashina Vremeni (The Time Machine), Skomorokhi (The Saltimbancos), Vtoroye Dykhaniye (The Runner’s High).
From 2019, Namin has been a producer for the Hermes Brothers, a Moscow band. He played the guitar as a special guest on some of their tracks. Their three music videos, recorded live at a concert, have just been released.
The Kamasutra
Album cover Dinosaurs

The Flowers

Founded by Namin in 1969, after a half-banned twenty-year existence under the Soviet regime, The Flowers were set free when Gorbachev came in and stopped their activities after a world tour (1986–1988).

In 1999, after a ten-year break, Namin assembled The Flowers band again. After a big concert The Flowers–30 celebrating their anniversary, the band started their creative activity: the musicians participated in staging of the musical Hair and rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, recorded the ethnic album «Russian Village Songs», took part in international tours and festivals.
In the year of band’s 40th anniversary Namin with The Flowers recorded two albums at the Abbey Road Studio: Back to the USSR (recording 2009, release 2010) with his 70s hits and Window to Freedom (recording 2010, release 2011) with songs that were forbidden by the Soviet government in the 80s. Society of Sound, a monthly place to listen to, discover and discuss music and sound, included this album in its collection.

In 2011–2012, three concert DVDs were released:

—The Flowers. 40 (jubilee concert) (2010) that summed up the groups 40 years of creativity, flawlessly presenting all its best-known songs. Musicians from various lineups participated along with friends and guests;
— Homo Sapiens (2012) a concert that included an instrumental intro along with 12 new songs;
—Flower Power (2012) a concert that showcased  contemporary remakes of old hits and new songs, which The Flowers played with friends, guests and Russia’s best musicians.
Some of The Flowers’ most socially relevant songs include:
-“Joy & Shining” that was part of Namin’s project One World Freedom, and was performed at a special plenary meeting of the UNESCO General Conference in Paris honouring the Declaration on Cultural Diversity’s 10th anniversary. The composition ‘Joy & Shining’ graphically embodies the idea of One World. Along with rock and pop stars and ethnic musicians, adepts of the world’s five major religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam – chant prayers in the song. Shining, Joy and Love unites everyone in this hymn of unity among the earth’s diverse peoples.
-“Feast During the Plague”, dedicated to the war in Ukraine.
-The Flowers’ remake of “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd and “Give Peace a Chance” by John Lennon, which received international acclaim.
-Namin’s song “Window to Freedom” performed by The Flowers in 2010 with Russian rock stars, was included in the  Free To Rock film, and The Flowers performed it at the film’s presentation at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles.
Autumn 2019 marked the beginning of a jubilee year for The Flowers, which kicked off with a concert Flowers Concert – 50 in the Kremlin Palace on 19 November.
«A Feast in Time of Plague» / «Give Peace a Chance» / «This World is Strange», from the «Politinform» series
The Flowers – 40. Live concert. 2010 
Homo Sapiens. Live concert. 2012 
  Flower Power. Live concert. 2012 
At the The Flowers–50 concert in The Kremlin Palace independent shooting team made a film showing what was going before the gig as well as backstage. The film is called simply The Flowers 50 — Backstage.
“Backstage” documentary film
The Flowers–50. Live show. TV Version, presented by Russian national television. Life show from Kremlin Palace
Window to Freedom. (Music and lyrics by Stas Namin)
Angel’s Confession. (Music and lyrics by Stas Namin)
Nostalgia for the Truth. (Music and lyrics by Stas Namin)

Other projects and interests

Astrophysics

Namin’s interest in the cosmos, the ideas of the wholeness of the universe, binding of the earthly consciousness and the cosmic began in his childhood, from the stories of his father, a military pilot, about his observations during flights of incomprehensible objects, from a meeting at the age of nine with the legendary Gagarin immediately after his return to Earth. As a young man he developed a fascination for the cosmology of Blavatskaya, the spiritual practices of Alice Bailey, the cosmism of Nikolai Fyodorov and the noosphere doctrine of Vladimir Vernadsky. In his student years reading of Samizdat The Rose of the World by Daniel Andreev, Velimir Khlebnikov’s Tablets was added as well as an interest in Indian philosophy. Later there came the acquaintance and longstanding friendship with the cosmonaut and artist Alexei Leonov, and during his studies at the All-Russian Academy of Sciences — lectures by historian and philosopher Lev Gumilev, his theory of ethnogenesis, passionarity and the connection between all the processes taking place in the biosphere and the impact of cosmic energy.

In 2014, Namin attended STARMUS, a global festival of science communication in Spain, met many of the world’s leading physics scientists, including Stephen Hawking. They spent a week talking, discussing the issues to which Hawking devoted his lectures and seminars. The scientist recommended that Namin contact the unique British designer Mark Turner — one of only three in Britain to hand-build custom-made telescopes — which Namin did on his return to Moscow. A few months later the telescope was ready, delivered to Russia and Namin got the opportunity to observe stars, planets and galaxies from the window of his Moscow flat.

In the same 2014, during meetings with Hawking, he got the idea for a future symphony, which he finished in 2016 — Centuria S-Quark. «Centuria is a prediction, along the lines of Nostradamus’ Centuria. The S-quark is the ‘strange quark’ — a type of tiny material particle found by humanity. I see my symphony as a kind of prediction, a prediction of the strange future of the material world.» (Stas Namin)

Travels

Namin’s interest in travelling probably began in his youth, with a trip to Armenia with his mother. It was not only a new visual experience for him — the vast mountain landscapes, the snow-capped peaks — and an introduction to new, unusually hospitable and friendly people, but also a source of inspiration for the future. In 2014, he, in his turn, took his son to Armenia, and the result of their 2000-kilometre journey through the country of his ancestors was the documentary The Ancient Temples of Armenia. He also dedicated his painting series to it, which was presented at the Russian Academy of Arts and partially  was included in the permanent exhibition of the National Gallery of Armenia.

In 1997, as a successful musician, producer and public figure, he and his friend, the medical scientist and TV journalist Yuri Senkevich, the legendary traveller Thor Heyerdahl and some other friends made his first trip around the world. Having started in Moscow, they circled around all continents — Europe, Africa, South America, islands Easter, Tahiti and Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and returned to Russia from the other side of the world. This journey marked the start of Namin’s International Geographic’s travel-movie series and several photographic series.

Namin has realised his interest in different cultures both in the One World International Ethnic Festival he founded in 1990 in Moscow and in collaboration with the French SOS-Rassismus movement in joint cultural events in Paris. Later One World evolved into a social movement, and in 2019 the One World Freedom Foundation was established, which supports humanitarian ideas and initiatives aimed at the survival and recovery of humanity.

India

In the early 2010s, Namin, who back in the sixties had developed a love to Indian music and philosophy under the influence of his idols, The Beatles, learns to play the ancient Indian musical instrument, the sitar, and in the spring of 2012 tours North India, the pilgrimage grounds of the Fab Four. He meditates in the Himalayas, visits Buddhist and Hindu temples and monasteries, and performs sitar concerts in Vrindavan and Varanasi.

Africa

In the late eighties, during his first world tour with the group ‘Flowers’, Namin visited Zimbabwe and was fascinated by African culture. In the early 2000s, travelling with friends, within several years Namin toured most of the countries of the continent. On these trips, he created a series of photographs and videos which became part of his International Geographic series.

Balloons

Having first attended the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (USA, New Mexico) in 1991, Stas decided to organize something similar in Russia.

In 1992, SNC Corporation created its own branded balloon and organized the first Russian balloon fiesta ‘Peace March’ started on the Red Square. For the first and only time, dozens of balloons soared into the air in the very centre of Moscow and floated over the Kremlin and the whole city.

Later in 1992 the first Russian balloon with an unusual shape, the ‘Yellow Submarine’, was designed by Namin. It was, undoubtedly, inspired by the famous song of The Beatles — Yellow Submarine, but had an original design and did not copy the image from the same-name cartoon. Namin’s copyright on the design and the name of the balloon was registered in the USA. ‘Yellow Submarine’ multiply participated in the Russian Balloon Fiestas and the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta , the world’s largest media wrote about it. Namin’s balloon was recognized there as one of the most popular and entered the encyclopedia of the best balloons in the world.