Translated material
Beyond fashion and style
The New Manege hosts regular exhibitions of the Fashion and Style Photography festival.
Even if you love photography, as I do, the annual invasion of thousands of photographs in Moscow, either in the form of a photo biennale (in even years), or specialized “Fashion and Style” festivals (in odd years), becomes a serious test of a bright feeling. Even if the festival opens with a lavish retrospective of hardcore glamor star Helmut Newton. Because the person is weak. And photographs of “fashion and style” are like cakes; they cannot be devoured continuously. You will definitely want something spicy or bitter - just not sweet. Exhibitions at the New Manege will help you take your mind off the cruel dictates and arrogant self-sufficiency of fashion this year.Having gotten bored with us from the abundance of gloss at the last (year before last) fashion and style festival, Olga Sviblova came up with the idea of diluting the current one with a completely unexpected theme - circus. An occupation that is fundamentally unfashionable and completely unstylish. And even if you don’t like the circus, as I don’t, it’s worth going to the exhibitions.
In photographs from the National Fund for Contemporary Art of France and the European House of Photography (Paris) - indispensable participants in all Moscow photo festivals - the circus appears as a special world, fantastic and strange, made up of traditions, miracles, dreams and memories. The miracles here are both circus and photographic. A real miracle - two works from the series “Animal Movements” by Eadweard Muybridge (1887). The measured movements of an elephant, broken down into phases, are interesting to look at, even though they have nothing to do with the circus. And they represent only the latest achievements of photographic equipment of the century before last. Animals busy with their own movement calm down a little. All the other smaller brothers - circus performers - are sad and lonely. As, indeed, are the circus people. Strange, poor wanderers in photographs of Brassai and Isis half a century ago. The disembodied, barely remembered, pale photocopy-like images of Nancy Wilson Padzik (1971). Tiny bright figures pinned to the darkness like tropical butterflies in gift boxes, photographed by Rona Bitner (1994). Deprived of laughter and sound due to photographic conditions, the circus turned out to be just a sad and tender memory of childhood. Tuning fork - Sarah Moon's project "The Little Match Girl". It is the only one dedicated to our country. Sarah Moon's strong impressions of Durov's Corner and the economic crisis in Russia combined with a sad story about an unhappy girl in a dream (or delirium) with light-filled arenas, lonely animals and a hopeless ending.
Alexander Rodchenko filmed a completely different circus before the war. Not so Soviet chic, suspended between times and therefore even more ephemeral than French. In it, the spotlights still shimmer with precious lights, and luxurious women pose elegantly. It is strange that this magical world was created for the magazine “USSR in Construction” - traditionally tough, adequate to the harsh reality in both themes and manner. And it remained unincarnated for more than half a century - the issue of the magazine was not published due to the outbreak of the war. But photographs and a tiny model were preserved. The curator of the exhibition, Alexander Lavrentyev, pulled a strange story out of oblivion, reconstructed the magazine, and showed us the “other” Rodchenko. His famous angles and spectacular techniques do not look deliberate at all; they turned out to be as natural in the circus as the skill of walking on wire and building pyramids from living bodies. But the circus has always been and will be - everything Soviet dissolves in the soft light of the arena: no dreamers and heroes, athletes and Komsomol members. Only the sweet magic of another world, devoid of ideology, which, it seems, Rodchenko, exhausted by the ideological press, was sincerely captivated by.
The third exhibition in the New Manege, unlike the circus theme, is not a natural loss of time and the fashion that accompanies it. But a real protest against artificial restrictions, an aggressive demonstration of a complete rejection of fashion and style in favor of the individual, her perfect, natural beauty. Tazzio Secchiaroli worked on the sets of films by Fellini and Antonioni, photographing great Italian artists and directors by surprise. Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Marcello Mastroianni, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni are magnificent in their own right. An honest recognition of this fact was enough for the photographer to feel not like a creator, but only a joyful witness of a miracle, a lucky person capable of capturing perfection inaccessible to others. Great names need adjectives no more than their bearers need fashionable clothes and someone else's style. Secchiaroli is not looking for spots in the sun - he is in admiration for his heroes.