The photo project continues the tradition of annual cooperation between the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts and the Béton Centre of Visual Culture in Moscow. The next exhibition will introduce viewers to a surprising and still little-studied phenomenon that originated in the Soviet photographic underground and has not lost its relevance to date – experimental and abstract art photography. The exhibition will feature 51 works by six photographers from the collection of the Béton Centre of Visual Culture.

In the 1960s and 1970s, photography was officially of a documentary, reportage nature and was not perceived as a form of fine art. It served as a mirror of reality, a tool capable of capturing historical events in the most authentic and concrete way (compared to painting and graphics) and thus preserving them for posterity. Just like art in general, photography was subjected to strict censorship: any formalist endeavours, nudity, acute social and religious subjects were forbidden. Much more freedom was given to it within the framework of amateur clubs. Thus, in many cities groups of independent photographers were formed, whose work in Soviet times did not spread beyond a narrow circle of like-minded people. Many of them experimented with film, trying to achieve interesting visual effects, but only a few consistently used these experiments in their creative practice. This exhibition is dedicated to the works of such masters from Leningrad and Sverdlovsk.

The core of the exposition are the works of two pioneers of experimental photography – Valentin Samarin from Leningrad and Evgeny Malakhin from Sverdlovsk (in the late 1980s and 1990s he became widely known in Sverdlovsk and beyond under the pseudonym B.U. Kashkin). They lived in different cities and, most likely, did not know each other, but they were united by a spirit of creative rebellion, a desire to elevate photography to the rank of fine art and to free it from any restrictions. Both of them valued unpredictable results and the uniqueness of their final images above all in experimental photography. Malakhin shot landscapes, portraits of his friends, nude girls, and then boiled the film, dissolving the captured images in a mist of molten emulsion (from the series The Principle of Randomness, 1970s; Abstract Composition, 1970s). These poetic black-and-white photographs often became illustrations for his samizdat poetry collections and the basis for assemblages.

Valentin Samarin was inspired, first of all, by the expression of dance: the basis of his creative heritage is the ballet theme (‘Untitled’, 1970s; ‘Igor Stravinsky’s “Sacred Spring”, 1990s, “Boris Eifman’s ballet ”The Master and Margarita’‘, 1993), transformed by the ballet theme (’The Master and Margarita’, 1993). 1993), transformed by overlaying negatives, applying temperature to the film, solarisation, light painting, pigment colouring and other techniques. Unlike Malakhin, Samarin has formulated a theoretical justification for his practices: he believes that the light-sensitive emulsion is capable of capturing not only the visible world, but also projections of the metaphysical dimension invisible to the human eye, which he reveals through the transformation of the photographic layer. The photographer calls such images Sanki (‘Sanki Astrology’, 2008). Persecuted by the KGB for his dissent, Samarin was forced to emigrate in 1981 and lived in Paris for almost 25 years, where much of his artistic legacy was created. He continued to make ballet and plastic theatre, created a number of portraits of prominent contemporaries (‘Joseph Brodsky’, 1988), and organised more than 90 exhibitions throughout Europe.

Less well known are the works of Nikolai Matryonin from Leningrad, who has been compared to Jackson Pollock, the representative of abstract expressionism: like the celebrated American painter, he worked with large formats and created objectless compositions by arbitrarily pouring and splashing developer on the film, covering it with paint and adhesive tape (From the series ‘Abstraction’, 1975). The seriousness and consistency of his photographic experiments is also demonstrated by the fact that in 1977 he organised the first unofficial exhibition of abstract photography in Leningrad, thus supporting the community of experimenters established in the city. Those photographers who became known for their figurative, realistic photography also experimented with film. For example, the exhibition presents two works by the archivist photographer Gennady Prikhodko (‘Composition’, 1968; ‘Gemini’, 1977), whose documentary images illustrate almost all publications devoted to Leningrad’s unofficial art.

The searches of the Soviet innovators, who laid the foundation for contemporary art photography, were then continued by young authors: in the 1990s Andrei Chezhin turned to objectless photography (from the series ‘Abstract Photography’, 1997-2001), Alexander Kitaev created a series of photographs created without a camera (‘Photogram’, 1995). Although from a technical point of view their late 20th century experiments no longer carried the spirit of radical innovation inherent in the works of Samarin, Malakhin and Matryonin, they supported the photographers’ desire to construct a self-sufficient new reality, free from dogma and as far removed as possible from the reality around them.

Exhibition ‘Abstractionism in Photography’ 16+

31 August – 20 October 2024

Main building | Ekaterinburg, Voyevodina, 5

Opening hours

Wed – Sun : 11:00-19:00 (box office until 18:00);

Mon – Tue: weekends

Tickets

400 roubles / admission

200 roubles / concessionary