Sergei Ilnitsky is a staff photographer for European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) in Moscow since 2003.
He was born in 1974 in the small town of Mariupol, Ukraine. His passion for photography started as a child. He attended the Academy of Arts and Culture in Siberia while freelancing for newspapers and advertising agencies. Upon graduation, he worked at the regional newspaper Kuznetsky Kray. In 1995, he began as a stringer for EPA assigned to the Siberian region of Russia.
He has covered topics ranging from everyday life in the Russian villages to the life of a nomad, as well as children’s colonies in Siberia, the miner's strike in the Kemerovo region, and a project about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. However, the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London was his career’s first big sporting event.
In 2001, he received first prize in Press Photo of Russia’s sport category and, one year later, Press Photo of Russia also named two of his projects the best of the year.
