An arms fair may contain all the trappings of war, but it is nothing like a battlefield. It is “an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger foods and shiny weapons,” said photographer Nikita Teryoshin in a press release about his new book, “Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War.”

Bodies, he continues, are mannequins or pixels on a screen. Machine guns and bazookas are plugged into flatscreens to shoot targets in a computer game-like simulation, and mock battles are staged in artificial environments for high-ranking guests, heads of states, ministers, generals and arms dealers.

“I’d say it blew my mind,” Teryoshin told CNN in a video call, recalling his first time attending an arms trade fair, where military, security and policing equipment is showcased and sold.

The Russian photographer said he was used to seeing images of war in the media — towns destroyed, the bloodied faces of people caught in conflict — but was taken aback by the disconnect between those scenes and the business dealings behind them.

“Most of the time, I’d see people… drinking beer, wine and, like, a vodka next to the machine guns and really (having) a hardcore drinking party,” said the 37-year-old, who has spent close to a decade documenting what goes on behind the scenes of the military-industrial complex.

Teryoshin has seen weapons being sold and tested at expos across the world, in Poland, Belarus, France, Germany, South Korea, China, the UAE, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, USA and South Africa. His book, released earlier this year, paints a picture of an absurd enterprise run by seemingly careless merchants of destruction.

One photo shows a half-consumed mug of coffee left near the edge of a table, barely a foot away from dummy Python, Derby and Spike ER missiles on sale for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. Another captures a man in a shiny pin-stripe gray suit crawling under an armored vehicle between two large tires that look like they could crush him at any moment.

“I think it tells (us) things about this banality of, you can say, the evil… and how we are selling weapons as (if they were) vacuum cleaners,” said Teroyshin. “On the one hand, they tried to make it look perfect with this (gallery-like space) for the exhibition, and on the other hand, when you look… (and) see all the details… it’s kind of dirty.”

Teryoshin captured these scenes with a distinct flair — using a flash to create high-contrast, saturated images, some shot from awkward angles to leave viewers feeling unsettled.

The photographer also has a knack for picking out the kitsch and propaganda on display. There’s the close up of a blue-eyed, red-lipped mannequin decked out in a military uniform and wearing glittery eyeshadow; a travel poster-esque image of fighter jets and cotton candy clouds that one might expect to read “Wish you were here” scrawled in cursive; or the photo of a cardboard cutout solider, in full military gear, holding a rifle with a cartoonish rendering of a mushroom cloud in the background. The more authoritarian the host country is, the kitschier things get, said Teroyshin.

In Russia, Teryoshin visited an arms fair at Patriot Park, a huge theme park often described as a “military Disneyland” where visitors are encouraged to climb on tanks, participate in urban warfare scenarios and eat military rations at the park canteen. It was here the photographer saw the biggest display of firepower he has ever witnessed: a mock battlefield, complete with artificial terrain and very real rockets.

“It was the only (arms fair I’d been to) where they were shooting real rockets over 20 kilometers (12 miles) maybe,” said Teroyshin.

No blood, no bodies

The photographer said he thought the salespeople at arms fairs actively distanced themselves from the damage these weapons cause. “There is no connection to death and war. You never see blood or bodies,” said Teroyshin, adding that the only thing he saw showing the human impact was an amputee mannequin (called Majid), used to simulate catastrophic medical care scenarios.

Weapons companies also appeared to brand themselves as heroes, said Teroyshin, who documented slogans he saw on site. Kalashnikov Group, whose AK –47 rifles are among the cheapest on the market and are thought to have killed more people globally than any other firearm, used the slogan “70 years defending peace,” he said, while marketing materials by Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers read: “We are engineering a better tomorrow.”

In his book, Teroyshin has ironically arranged the slogans with his own images taken at the fairs. Manufacturing firm ITT Inc’s “Engineered for life” is paired to a close-up of a mannequin with a bullet hole in its head. Meanwhile, an Otis Defence slogan (“We believe every gun should always shoot like new. Whenever. Wherever. Forever.”) is paired with an image of three women in Islamic veils at an arms fair, one pretending to hold a rifle depicted in the poster in front of her.

Teroyshin began documenting all types of trade fairs — for pets, agriculture and funerals — because his photography school in Dortmund, Germany, was located next to an expo hall. In 2016, the photographer, who has lived in Germany for over 20 years, published “Sons and Guns,” a photo series about hunting fairs, before turning his attention to arms fairs.

He began taking pictures showing the faces of buyers and sellers, but later chose to keep them concealed. “I just was thinking, ‘it’s not about certain people, but it’s more about the system behind it,’ which is the problem,” said Teryoshin. “Because most of the people will tell you: ‘Yeah, we have to work here because we have to feed our family’.”

Anonymizing his subjects was also a metaphor for an industry that “is kind of shady” and “doesn’t want much publicity,” he added.

On one of the last pages of the book, Linda Åkerström the head of policy and advocacy at the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society has written an afterword for Teroyshin’s book detailing her experience at IDEX, the biggest arms fair in the Middle East, and the growth of the military-industrial complex.

In it she said that the world’s military expenditure hit a record breaking $2.2 trillion with spending in Central and Western Europe surpassing levels “at the end of the Cold War.” The US and Russia, she said, were responsible for “more than half of the world’s exports of major conventional arms from 2018-2022,” and that states that did the most importing included India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia and China.

Åkerström said despite the Arms Trade Treaty coming into force in December 2014, many of the world’s top exporters and importers, including the US, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia are yet to ratify and that “the international arms trade remains less regulated than the trade in bananas.”

Teroyshin said he began his work, he believed weapons had no place in the world, but with the start of the Ukraine war, he said he’s changed his mind. “It is important that Ukraine is able to like to fight back and to protect democracy there against Putin’s regime.”

As one unnamed salesman from the Swedish at BAE Systems Bofors told Åkerström: “I would also like a world free from arms, but there is always a madman. If you can’t hit back, you’ll get beat up.”

“Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War,” published by Gost, is available now.

Fifty years after the Carnation Revolution, Cunha’s photographs continue to immortalise the military coup that changed the course of Portuguese contemporary history.

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On 25 April 1974, Alfredo Cunha was working as a photographer for ‘O Século’, a daily newspaper published in Lisbon.

Little did he know, when he left for work that morning, he was about to embark on a three-day, career-defining assignment.

Over the next few days, Cunha, who was then 20 years-old, documented the Carnation Revolution; the nearly bloodless coup that ended more than forty years of authoritarian rule in Portugal and Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship.

Today, Cunha’s pictures are considered one of the most important and complete testimonies of the revolution which takes its name from the flowers offered to soldiers and placed in the muzzles of their guns.

“I left work in the evening and when I got home my mum told me there was a revolution going on. I went back to the newspaper again, ‘O Século’, where I worked, and took photographs,” Cunha told Euronews.

An iconic portrait

One of the most famous photographs from Cunha’s series wasn’t published until 1994. 

It was printed by the newspaper ‘Público’ as part of an editorial entitled ‘O olhar do capitão’ and helped elevate Cunha’s career. 

“There are those who consider this portrait to be the portrait of 25 April. I think it’s a portrait of Salgueiro Maia, nothing more than that, but it takes us to a point where the man becomes a myth. That’s what people see in this portrait,” explained Cunha.

Another photo from his series captured a group of young people gathered behind a cordon of soldiers. It’s also one of Cunha’s favourites: “It’s a partial portrait since there are no women, but it shows us the state of mind on that day. 

“What we were like, how we dressed, how we had our hair, whether it was a multiracial society or not. And it was. I think this is a portrait in which everything is there if we bring these two faces together (the military man who smokes and the young black man at the back). It’s Portugal in the 1970s.”

The award-winning photojournalist is holding a series of exhibitions across Portugal called ’25 April 1974 Thursday’ to mark the 50th anniversary of the revolution. 

Cunha has also published a book under the same name in collaboration with the Portuguese street artist Vhils and texts by Fernando Rosas, Carlos Matos Gomes and Adelino Gomes.

A series of works based on Cunha’s photos will also be exhibited at the Lisnave shipyards in Almada, some six kilometres from Lisbon, to provide fresh interpretations.

AUSTIN, Texas – A TV photographer was arrested during a pro-Palestine protest held Wednesday on the University of Texas at Austin campus.

The Austin protest was one of several that took place across college campuses in Texas, including UTSA, as well as California and Massachusetts.

Earlier this week, U.S. senators voted 79-18 to approve a $95 billion war aid package that would directly benefit Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. Approximately $26 billion would go to “Israel and humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Before the arrest in Austin, video shows multiple Texas Department of Public Safety troopers armed with helmets and batons attempting to move protesters back.

A trooper off-camera can be heard saying, “Get on the ground! Lay down!”

“I was moving!” the photographer was heard saying to the trooper.

The photographer was handcuffed. An unidentified person held onto the photographer’s camera and walked alongside him as it continued to roll.

After the arrest, local reporters already at the protest caught up with the photographer. He identified himself as “Carlos” and said he worked at KTBC Fox 7, a TV station in Austin.

“They were pushing me, and they said that I hit an officer,” the photographer told KXAN reporter Nabil Brent Remadna. “I didn’t hit an officer. They were pushing me.”

The photographer told reporters that he had never experienced something like this before.

“I told them I was the press,” the photographer said.

It isn’t immediately clear what charges he may be facing.

KXAN also reported that Texas DPS sent Houston-based troopers to Austin ahead of Wednesday’s protest on the UT campus.

The DPS response to the protest drew the ire of District 19 state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde in addition to other areas along the Texas-Mexico border.

“The Department of Public Safety has pulled out all the stops to harass innocent college students, but wouldn’t lift a finger to help the victims in the Uvalde massacre,” state Sen. Gutierrez said in a statement Wednesday evening. “Our broken state moved troopers all the way from Houston to Austin so they could quash students’ first amendment rights.

“The very force that you see beating and arresting these college students are the same ones that, for 77 long minutes, stood by as a lone teenage shooter massacred 21 precious lives in an elementary school. We live in a broken state where actual violence is met with fear and trepidation from those meant to protect and serve, and where exercising our rights is seen as a threat.

“I am demanding accountability for the actions carried out by DPS at the University of Texas today.”

At least 20 protesters were taken into custody during Wednesday’s protest in Austin, the Associated Press reported.

KSAT reached out to DPS on Wednesday evening. So far, we have not heard back.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.