Translated material
Authorize them!
Results of the sixth competition for the best photo report about Moscow “Silver Camera”
The main winner of this competition, like all previous ones, is the director of the Moscow House of Photography, Olga Sviblova. The competition is a kind of experiment on the topic: what is the efficiency of Sviblov’s energy aimed at changing the status of photography in the public consciousness. Reviews of the winners from year to year show that this efficiency is high (despite the fact that the level of the competitions themselves is average, which we also regularly write about). Thanks to permanent exhibitions and biennales, a new generation of people with cameras is being raised. The eyesight of the new best Russian photographers is corrected, not least by getting acquainted with the masterpieces of world photography brought to her exhibitions by Sviblova.There is only one problem: the author's identification of the winners' photographs. Ironically, Ivan Kurinnoy with his series “Authorize Me!” was among the laureates in the “Faces” category. Funny teenagers, making faces like freaks, thrust a piece of paper with crazy Internet logins like nectos or “this” into the lens. The cute photos deservedly won the MIAN company prize. In a comic form, Kurinnoy dramatized the very situation of the Silver Camera competition. After all, the first review of participants takes place incognito. Photos have only codes and numbers. And now, thanks to the decision of the jury, which included such wonderful experts as the executive secretary of the Union of Photographers of Russia Sergei Burasovsky, the director of the Kommersant photo service Eddie Opp and other specialists, the “verification of the user’s identity rights”, otherwise authorization, took place.
And it turned out that almost every winner, thanks to Sviblova, has another, unauthorized double. These doubles - stars of world photography - quite harshly direct the eyes of the “silver” laureates. In the “Events and Everyday Life” category, the winners were Lyudmila Zinchenko (Europe Square series, Moscow government prize), Gleb Kosorukov (Last Days series, MasterCard prize), Oksana Yushko (Moscow is... series, prize of the MIAN group of companies), Igor Mukhin (series “Heavy Breath of Winter”, prize of the Pio Global company). For assistance in authorization, the laureates have reason to thank the legendary masters of the Magnum agency, for example, or the classics of Soviet photography. It’s more difficult with the “Architecture” nomination. It was won by Oleg Parshin (series “Construction of Moscow City”, “View of Moscow from the Copernicus House”, prizes from the Moscow government and Sony), Pavel Kuznetsov (series “Twice Two”, prize from MasterCard), Ilya Keitelgisser (series “ Reflections, prize of the Pio Global company), Igor Okhremenko (series “Night Moscow”, prize of the MIAN group of companies). Their eye-directors were very worthy: Brassaï, Richard Peyre, Igor Palmin, and many, many classics of the genre. But poeticization through the eyes of the classics of Luzhkov’s Moscow gives rise to the feeling of some kind of orchestral kick, a brassy, loud false performance. We feel the same falsehood when looking at the pompous abracadabra of most Novomoskovsk buildings.
I found the “Faces” section the most convincing. It awarded to Vladimir Vyatkin (series “The Passing Generation”, prize of the Moscow government), Alexander Katyer (series “Behind the Glass”, prize from MasterCard), Georgy Pervov (series “People as People”, prize from PioGlobal), mentioned by Ivan Kurinnoy. What was inspiring was that behind each of these photographers the alter ego from the world of stars was the least guessable. All of them - the master of Soviet photography, Vladimir Vyatkin, with a series of Rembrandt-like portraits of the destinies of our great old men (Fomenko, Igor Moiseev), and as if young Georgy Pervov was observing a funny and at the same time terribly cruel pantomime of life, and caught in the passenger faces behind the wet windows buses and trolleybuses, Hitchcockian suspense Alexander Katyer, and the above-mentioned Ivan Kurinnoy are their own directors. And they are the easiest to authorize.