Chamber genre

The most prestigious photo competition in the capital is taking place at the House of Photography

When I was a child, I had such a beautiful book, either published by the Planeta publishing house, or by Moskovsky Rabochiy. It was called “Moscow yesterday and today.” Published in the genre of a photo album. Many, many color and b/w photos about the everyday life of our beloved capital. Pink sunsets over the Moskva River (with a view of the Kremlin), golden domes, inspired high-rise installers, touching first-graders rushing to the first bell with bouquets and backpacks, bespectacled students with Moscow State University in the background and, of course, very romantically photographed public transport - friendly winking buses, blue trolleybuses clinging in arcs to the clouds, green-eyed taxis... Everything is so cute, everything is so cozy. I now remember this book with such nostalgia and hardly think about the fact that the album is, after all, ideological propaganda and its purpose is to form the correct photographic image of Moscow during the era of Brezhnev’s stagnation.

The recently opened exhibition-competition for the best photograph about Moscow “Silver Camera-2004”, organized by the Moscow government, MDF, held under the personal patronage of Moscow Mayor Yu.M. Luzhkov and sponsored by the Bank of Moscow, Bee Line, Sony MasterCard, Kodak, Hennessy, Ingeocom, the intonation of the book of stagnant times is largely picked up. You can get nostalgia and cuteness from a ladle. And golden domes, and open, kind faces, and... The names of the episodes will speak for themselves: “Quiet hour in kindergarten”, “By the colors of the city together”, “Cast lace”, “Academy of Arts”, “House Major” , “I’m starting from the beginning to get acquainted with my native city.” Many of the photographs at the exhibition would perfectly illustrate the new edition of the book “Moscow Yesterday and Today.” Technologies are now more advanced, which makes it possible to turn even revealing evidence of the true time (timelessness) of the eighties - miserable Brezhnev high-rise buildings - into nostalgic mirages. And in the same intricate and moody way they present in rhyme the authentic evidence of our time - Novomoskovsk architecture in the format of “Scarlet Sails” or “Golden Keys”.

A strange dissonance of this idyll looks like series on difficult and unceremonious metropolitan topics: the burning Manezh, the demolition of old buildings, a boarding school for disabled children, photographic recordings of people of the social bottom or brutal special forces (or Limonovites, or communists). What’s remarkable is that the image of Moscow that ends up being very adequate to its real perception. Those in power are fighting to make the city look enlightened and feel comfortable in it. They try as hard as they can, but what comes out is some kind of simulation of well-being, everything is some kind of staging of comfort, like the creations of Posokhin’s workshop, artificially ennobled by Rodchenko’s photographic angles, presented on the “Silver Camera”. Life is not accountable to official reports, the one with which for some reason at all times in Russia it is not customary to be considered, rushing from all the cracks with such “images” that make you feel ashamed, scared, and painful.

The competition exhibition highlighted this already familiar dissonance of the Moscow style. And therefore, by the way, I consider the very conceptual minimalist photo sketch “Difficulties of Speech” to be one of the best projects. The photographs were simply of letters on the asphalt. They painfully try to form the phrase “I love you.” But the rhythm, knocked down like a stutter, makes me think about some kind of smut and verbal pornography. Here is the grapheme of this phrase in the pictures of the photo series (the space between the letters is the boundaries between individual frames): “I love you, I love you.” To paraphrase the poet: I love the capital, but with a strange love...

In terms of quality, the competition turned out to be even. The style of the masters leading the photo chronicle of modern Moscow (mainly on the pages of the Afisha magazine) is easily recognizable. It’s nice that this year there are more “stylish” photographs than ordinary ones as a percentage. My favorite was the master who called his series of photographs “Biased Reality. From the experience of shooting with a camera obscura.” In the old days (from the 16th century) a camera obscura (optical camera) replaced a camera for artists: it had a lens and a dark body, on the back wall of which a picture was projected. The film was paper placed on plain glass. When exposed to light, a clear image was seen upside down, which the artists traced, thus obtaining an accurate fixation of reality. So the author of the “Biased Reality” series chose his own path of double staging: the camera captures the world seen through the lens of his distant ancestor. The ordinary is delightfully transformed: space moves like a stage platform. Perspectives and angles break into some anomalous dimensions, as if in the manneristic painting of Parmigianino. And light shadows dance. But they captured simple street scenes! This “chamber” genre could not have come at a better time on “Silver Camera”.

As you probably guessed, the names of the competition participants are classified. And their works are exhibited under serial numbers. So come to the House of Photography in July, pick up a form at the entrance and enter the number of the project you like. It is possible that you will determine the main prize-winner of the festival. On the twentieth there is a distribution of elephants.

Sergei KHACHATUROV