The fastest way to make someone stop looking at a photo is to put a face in it. We recognize it, we file it, we scroll. Serhii Fett solves that problem by taking the head off entirely.

A person standing in a field of tall grass, wearing a large padded jacket, with their head replaced by a bundle of dried grass.
I Need to Grow

The Ukrainian visual artist, now based in Germany, builds his images the slow way. Everything is styled, posed, and shot for real, then assembled in Photoshop.

No AI, which feels worth saying out loud in 2026.

A person standing in a lush green forest, wearing a brown coat, with their head obscured by foliage, holding plants in their hands.
Strange Thoughts

A figure stands there in a good coat, perfectly composed, and where the face should be there is a cloud, or a puff of something, or a clean absence.

He calls a few of them Man Cloud, Fluffhead, and Anatomy of Void, then declines to explain any of them and leaves the interpretation to us. Rude. Correct.

A man in a suit stands on a street with a no photography sign for a head, holding a smartphone, surrounded by cherry blossom petals on the ground.
Contours of Absence

What’s clever is what the missing head does to the rest of the frame. Posture starts talking. The tilt of a shoulder, the hands, the hem of a sleeve, all of it carries weight it never had to carry before.

Fett describes the goal as opening a door to the invisible, and the strange thing is that emptying the picture is what does it.

A person standing in water at night, wearing a brown suit jacket and tie, holding a fish. They have a helmet obscuring their face and are wearing green rubber boots and gray knee-high socks.
Don’t Stay in the Office Too Long
A person sitting atop a red ladder in a vast desert, holding an inflatable shark, under a clear blue sky.
After the Sea
A surreal image of a human figure intertwined with a tree trunk in a dark forest, with multiple arms and legs clinging to the tree.
Root System
A black and white image of a person obscured by a large mass of dandelion seeds, resembling a unique floral headpiece.
Fluffed
A silhouetted figure standing in water surrounded by flames, set against a dark background.
Fiery Night
A man in a suit leans against a stack of hay bales with his head obscured by the bales, set in a rural landscape.
Harvest Time

He’s self-taught, has picked up a 500px Photographer of the Year title along the way, and doesn’t organize the work into tidy series. It’s one growing collection, added to whenever the next idea arrives with its head already missing.

A person sitting on the grass with their head replaced by a stop sign, next to a wooded area and a pathway.
Don’t Stop Me
An orange armchair sits in a grassy field, with a large mirror reflecting a blue sky and fluffy clouds, obscuring the upper body of a person wearing black pants and boots.
Artist Was Present, Subject Wasn’t
A person lying on the ground with a body resembling shattered pottery, surrounded by pieces of broken ceramic plates, on a paved surface with a yellow line.
Take Care of Your Head

See more at serhiifett.com and @serhiifett.

Images © Copyright Serhii Fett

Author

Ben VanderVeen is the founder and editor of Moss & Fog, one of the web’s longest-running visual culture destinations. Since 2009, he’s been finding and framing the most beautiful, surprising, and thought-provoking work in art, architecture, design, and nature — reaching over 325,000 readers each month. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

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