From stuffed elephants to picnics under power lines, Leipzig-born photographer Frank Herfort coaxes magical, colour-saturated tableaux from intriguing slices of everyday Russian life. “This moment of life here could go on forever,” says Herfort. “The storyline, these absurd constellations, develops out of the relationship between the people in the photos and the space around them”. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A young woman takes the elevator at the house of former Russian political leader Sergei Kirov in St Petersburg. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





Young police officers taking part in an audiovisual psychotherapeutic treatment at MVD police school in Grozny, Chechen Republic. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A young family picnics beneath power lines in a residential area of Maryino, Moscow. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





Abandoned farming equipment near Moscow. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





An administrator in a theatre based in Kolomenskoye, Moscow. “In western Europe everything is so neatly defined, so specific”, says Herfort. “A waiting room is a waiting room, an office is an office. In Russia, in contrast, rooms are open to interpretation, many-layered and not so prettified. And I also noticed that there seem to be many more people just sitting around in them. None of them seems at first sight to know what they are doing there. I tried to integrate people like that into my pictures” . (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A lonely dog watches the mailboxes in a typical Moscow residential block. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





The director of Moscow’s zoological museum sits by a stuffed elephant which never found its way to its planned place among the exhibits. Because of its weight, the creature has always stood on the ground floor next to the ticket point. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A former airport building turned into a sports complex in Moscow. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A train passenger with his luggage waiting at the Kazanskaya Vokzal (Kazansky railway station) in Moscow. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





The VIP waiting room at the station. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





A sales stand of watermelons in St Petersburg. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





The waiting hall at Kazansky railway station. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)





The only hotel in the closed city of Polyarny, near the northern Russian submarine base Murmansk. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)