Translated material
On the other side of the print
Parallel worlds of the Moscow Photo Biennale
The Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery hosts exhibitions of the Moscow International Festival “Photobiennale 2008”. The Tommasoli family, Ogonyok magazine, the All-Russian Physical Culture Society Dynamo and graphic artist Evgeny Shcheglov opened their archives for viewing.Exhibition “Beyond Silver. The Tommasoli family - photographers since 1906" talks about what is hidden on the other side of photography. What could be there? An alien, different reality, not the same as after the creation of the imprint. This is the area of mixing the imaginary and the real. Three generations of photographers spanning a century present their work. Silvio Tommasoli's prints, the first photographs from the archive of the beginning of the last century, enter the experimental field of another reality. The multiplied female image in the “Untitled” photographs raises questions: do we see this lady as she was, or as the photographer saw her? And which one is which? The Shadows prints may provide an answer to these questions. Is our identity really that important, especially in photography, which itself is “multiplicity without an original”... Interest in shadows affects all representatives of this family. Filippo and Fausto Tommasoli created a herbarium with a complex openwork pattern - negative prints of plants. The game with a caught shadow is led by Alessandra Salardi Tommasoli. Her “Shadows” are expressive evidence of the artist’s existence, reflected on a light-sensitive surface. Our contemporary Sirio Tommasoli works with the space on the other side of the print. The receding images in Photographed draw us into the process of taking the photograph. “Windows” do not reflect light, do not let in the landscape; when gathered in groups, they accumulate color.
The project “Heroes of the Fifth Five-Year Plan” in photographs from the archives of Ogonyok magazine was implemented by curators Anna Shpakova and Mikhail Sidlin. Ogonkovo’s “heroes” live a smart, festive life on the covers of one of the country’s most popular magazines. This is life on the other side of everyday life. Milkmaid, excellent student in combat training, embroiderer, locksmith, craftsman, teacher, nurse, herdsman, agronomist. Portraits of workers of the 50s of the twentieth century were made by wonderful Soviet photographers: Dmitry Baltermants (in his gallery there are photographs of six general secretaries - from Stalin to Gorbachev), Mikhail Savin, who worked as a photojournalist at Ogonyok for forty years, the legendary war photojournalist Galina Sanko, Yakov Ryumkin , Oleg Knorring.
The same fifties can be seen in photographs from a then rare car. This is “The View from a Car Window” by Evgeny Shcheglov. The author captures life through the windshield: spacious streets, Pobeda taxis, random passers-by, the calm, measured life of Moscow as film directors and artists of the 40s and 50s saw it.
Gold around us is also a different reality. In the 80s, Moscow artists Natalya Abalakova and Anatoly Zhigalov, creators of the conceptual project “Total Artistic Action, or TOTART,” showed it in their performances. They painted the stairs gold, exhibited the “Golden Room,” and invited friends and housemates to participate in the “Golden Sunday.” During Sunday, everyone together painted fences, ballot boxes and benches in the color of state regalia and money. This sacred color, invading everyday life, raises the question of the boundaries of art, its connection with life. At the current exhibition, Victor Khmel and Elena Sukhoveyeva use the “golden autumn” cliche in their project, marking the surrounding landscape with strokes of gold foil - trees, stairs, a house, a fence, in order to then photograph it all.
Another reality: the realized fantasy of Pyotr Lovygin - Jamaica. Maybe this is a fantasy the artist has from childhood. He probably listened to the Italian song along with the whole country. Such a song is cramped in an apartment; it needs space. Pyotr Lovygin figured out how to do it: the Volga steppes, a girl on a bicycle, the Jamaican flag fluttering behind her, and the voice of Robertino Loretti resounding across the Volga. No one in the Volga region was particularly surprised by this performance. And the artist photographed this entire performance and showed it at the exhibition. True, we don’t hear the song itself, but we take the word that it happened. Sheet music is included with the photos, it says that Jamaica is a folk song. Well, that means it is so. If everyone loves, listens and sings a beautiful song for forty years, then it is definitely folk.
Photographic archives and staged photographs, amateur photos and random photographs, all of them, by their very existence, divide a moment into before and after, there and here, then and now. All the most interesting things happen there and before , on the other side of the print.