Viktor Lyagushkin – National Geographic photographer,
Nikon Ambassador (2013-2023), Subal Pro Team member, head of the PHOTOTEAM.PRO, winner of international photo contests, is now based in Georgia. Viktor was born in Moscow to a family of military men and spent his childhood and school time in Czechoslovakia. Then he returned to Moscow and, after school, graduated from the St. Petersburg Theatre Academy as an artist-decorator. He worked in magazines as a layout person, designer, and art director. A professional photographer since 1998. In 2003, Viktor took up underwater photography, and soon it became his main hobby and favorite work.
Author of the book Orda Cave. Awareness Project, Being a Dolphin, 100 Facts About Dolphins, laureate of the National Underwater World Prize. His solo exhibitions have been successfully exhibited all over the world. Viktor is the main organizer for the PHOTOTEAM.PRO, generator of ideas, energy, and, of course, a photographer.
Bogdana Vashchenko,
Writer, National Geographic Explorer, Creator of Cybernetic Alchemy,
based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Bogdana Vashchenko’s reportage blends scientific precision with mythopoetic charge. Her style is defined by immersive physicality, ethnographic attentiveness, sensory detail, lyrical detours, and firm scientific grounding. Editors often describe her work as scientific fieldwork written by a poet.
Her core gift is the ability to make readers feel an environment before they intellectually grasp it. She writes in a dual register — the tangible world and the metaphor beneath it — transforming field observations into emotionally resonant narratives that reveal why ecosystems matter.
A hallmark of her storytelling is the use of “riverstones”: small details introduced quietly (a rusted hook, a drifting bottle, a childhood memory) and later returned with symbolic weight. Characters emerge not as isolated figures but as parts of ecological feedback loops, their choices echoing through species, histories, and myths.
The result is reportage that is visually vivid, structurally precise, emotionally controlled, and always rooted in real science — yet it lingers like literature. Her stories give readers what they crave: truth with texture and knowledge with consequence.
Biography
Bogdana Vashchenko is a writer and National Geographic Explorer. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, she holds a Master of Science in theoretical physics from Kyiv National University.
Her path has been anything but linear. After leaving academia, she worked a range of unexpected jobs — from sewing leather bags and cleaning horse stalls to running an online windsurf shop. These experiences sharpened her adaptability and observational precision, shaping her ability to navigate complex environments and to see patterns where others might not.
Inspired by the fearless mongoose from Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, she follows a simple principle: “Run, find out, and tell people.”
She is the author of four popular science books — Orda Cave Awareness Project, Being a Dolphin, 100 Facts About Dolphins, and White Sea Bestiary — as well as the biographical nonfiction work Natalie Avseenko: Journey to the Depth.
Bogdana has published extensively in National Geographic, including 17 articles in the Russian edition and 8 feature stories in the Georgian edition. In 2022, she was named a National Geographic Explorer.
She has been working and collaborating with photographer Viktor Lyagushkin since 2010.
In her personal life, Vashchenko has been married to Viktor since 2013.