Test by event

Magnum territory at Winzavod

Since Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and George Roger founded the Magnum Fotos agency after the war, its name has become synonymous with the photographic elite. An invitation to Magnum for a photographer is the same as an Oscar nomination for a cinematographer. It’s not enough to just be an excellent professional; you need to establish yourself “as a concerned witness of world events.” The exhibition “Stars of the Magnum Photo Agency,” which opened at Winzavod with the support of the French Embassy as part of the VII Photobiennale, proves that today reportage photographers have moved far away from front-page aesthetics.

Where the works of Georgy Pinkhasov, the only Russian Magnum photographer, are exhibited, it would be worth installing a voice recorder to record viewers' comments. Two interested young men, for example, argued for an hour about whether the red spot in the frame was the back of a person or whether it was a curtain swaying against the background of the window. Each picture of Pinkhasov is a test of understanding. You can’t glance at his works with an indifferent glance and, satisfied with the information, move on. The photographer skillfully disguises his subjects; sometimes he has to meditate for a long time on the volumes drawn with mystical light, trying to understand who and what they belong to.

Pinkhasov rarely snatches individuals from the crowd. His photographs contain only implicit evidence of human presence in the world: the silhouettes of policemen against the backdrop of the passage of the Kievsky railway station seem to be a shot from an improved version of “Day Watch”; the night lamp, stingy with kilowatts, reveals luminous halos above the heads of Murmansk submariners; A ray of light snatches a bouquet of flowers that burst into flames from the gloomy crowd of the Moscow metro. Sudden floods of light pour upon the world like unmerited grace. And it seems that the work of a photographer comes down to this, so as not to miss these rare moments of divine insight. On Sunday evening, Pinkhasov conducted an open master class. Showing another photograph, in which only a geometric composition of black and white verticals was clearly visible, the photographer said: “Actually, this is a grandmother who sells pickles on the street in winter. But only I know this, and you don’t tell anyone either.”

Unlike Pinkhasov, who films from Morocco to Brighton Beach, American Liz Sarfati limits herself to the space of a room or a fragment of an interior. Her series is called "New Life". For several months, Liz photographed American teenagers. Her characters, experiencing the pangs of puberty, look detached from the everyday hustle and bustle. A girl, frozen among the shelves of a supermarket, looks into the distance through the backs of passers-by, as if she sees something there that is inaccessible to adults. The pimply guy, lounging on the bed with his hand at the level of his fly, is absorbed in himself and seems not to pay attention to the camera and the female photographer. Sarfati managed to show that strange and painful moment when a person stands on the threshold of a new life. From the outside it may seem that children are worried about the problems of an awakened libido, they are so awkward and diligent in showing off their own bodies. But once you understand the direction of their views, you understand: they know much more about their own future than adults think.

In the series “Shores” by the Belgian Harry Gruyer there are no close-ups of people, no flashy details, no inventive angles. The composition of the photographs is balanced by the horizon line, the only visible criterion for the difference between sea and sky. People look like small insects against a constant background: French yachtsmen caught at low tide; tourists flopping on the dense surface of the Dead Sea; old people in wheelchairs on the Barcelona beach. At some point, a running wave washes away these small figures, mixing them with sand and pebbles. Gruyer is worried about the nameless sea. What a person strives for when he says: “I want to go to the sea.” The one that existed before the beginning of history. Wise and calm, it is always ready to free itself from the absurd captivity of civilization, but so far it only watches with a grin the petty human fuss.

The exhibition of the Frenchman Guy Le Querrec “Jazz - from J to Z” is particularly noteworthy. If Pinkhasov, Sarfati and Gruyer, even working in a reportage manner, move from the particular to the general, then Kerrek’s photographs refer to the previous aesthetics of Magnum - to black and white reportage, direct, ironic and lively. Guy Le Querrec has been photographing jazz stars since the early 60s: Davis, Monk, Ray Charles... It seems that the jazz atmosphere is literally ingrained in his photographs, just like cigarette smoke, wine stains and road dust. Looking at his spontaneous compositions, you want to say: “It’s all jazz,” here every frame is an improvisation, and together they spiral into a crazy and daring jam session.

Natalia BABINTSEVA