Born in 1972 in the USSR, Leonid Plotkin grew up in America, studied law in Boston and Oxford and then practised law in New York City. He has worked as a freelance documentary photographer since 2007 and his work has appeared in various international publications including National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, the Guardian and the Economist. Leonid spends most of his time out in the world but calls New York City home.Long before he had the opportunity to set out on the road, Leonid was interested in the world and travel in history, mythology and religion. At the age of twenty he began travelling the ancient roads of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, photographing what has endured since before the beginning. Fascinated by the historical and cultural continuity of life on the Indian peninsula during his initial trip to the subcontinent in the mid 1990s, Leonid returned frequently and, over two decades, stayed for more than five years to study and photograph India’s religious traditions. His photographic work constitutes a meditative contemplation of the human yearning for transcendence and his photographs evoke the timeless intensity of man’s attempts to approach the eternal.
