Photo works from the collection of the Moscow Béton Center of Visual Culture were brought to Ekaterinburg.
The exhibition "Photomontage. Corrected Truth" presents 61 works by Russian and foreign authors. The exposition demonstrates pictures that do not act as a fixation of the surrounding world, but are the vision of the photographer-artist, presenting to the viewer his own, corrected world. The oldest work is dated 1867.
"Today this work is seen as a group portrait of the august family. Where is the photomontage in this? The first persons of the state in all times were very reluctant to be photographed. And to gather them together to create such a work was simply impossible. The author took a completely innovative way. He took photographs of individual figures - all these individual pictures have already become canonical - combined them and made a group portrait. Here photomontage acts as a technical tool. If the author had had the opportunity to bring everyone together, he would have done this work by taking a single frame," says Alexei Loginov, a historian of photography and art director of the Béton Center for Visual Culture.
The exposition is divided into two chronological blocks. The historical part includes works from the second half of the XIX century to the end of the XX century. It is mainly agitation-political direction - the themes are the world political situation, achievements of the Soviet state, tragic historical and contemporary events. There are examples of the use of photomontage in publishing projects - this is how Pavel Lopatin's book "Journey on the electric lamp", published in 1937, or issues of the magazine "USSR at the construction site" are designed.
The contemporary block is dedicated to works created from the beginning of the 21st century to 2023, among them those where artificial intelligence was used.
"This is a work from the project " Future Dwelling", where we are thinking about what a person of the future will be like. The work has a photographic basis, a huge number of layers of details. The creatures that fill the space were created with the help of artificial intelligence. There is a huge amount of codes, the aesthetics of computer games, sci-fi movies that inspired us - the work will be understandable to young people. The Pashkov House in Moscow was filmed as a base, it acts as a symbol of the library. We believe that descendants, when they study this work, will understand what we were interested in today. We seem to be fantasizing about the future, but we are talking about today," says Olga Michi, Creative Director of the Béton Center of Visual Culture.
Among the authors whose works are presented at the exhibition are Alexander Zhitomirsky, Evgeny Khaldey, Sergey "Africa" Bugaev, Boris Orlov, Valery and Natalia Cherkashin, French artist Gerard Ransinan.
A parallel program is planned for the exhibition; one of the first events will be a lecture by Alexei Loginov, a historian of photography and art director of the Béton Center of Visual Culture, on the creative possibilities of photomontage. The lecture will take place on September 30 at 14:00 at the "Hermitage-Ural" Center.
The exhibition "Photomontage. Corrected Truth" (12+) runs from September 30 to December 3, 2023 in the Grand Exhibition Hall of the «Hermitage-Ural» Center at 11 Vainera Street. Pushkin card is valid.
