Kirill Ivanov. Ice Automatic translate

Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by photographer Kirill Ivanov, which allows you to re-evaluate the beauty of frozen water in all its manifestations

• A unique view of a photographer, revealing the magical world of snow and ice in all its diversity and beauty
• An unusual angle found by a professional climber and skier
• Real mountains, as no advertising story will present them

The exhibition features photographs of mountains, but you will not find postcard views of mountain peaks, which are usually photographed by admiring amateurs or professionals working on commission. Kirill Ivanov literally looks at the mountains from a different angle: the photographs were taken not just by a photographer, but by a climber and skier.

In 1998, the author went to the mountains for the first time, to the Bezengi alpine camp. Since 2004, Kirill has been a mountaineering instructor, candidate master of sports. He climbed in the Caucasus, Pamirs, Crimea, Norway, Italy, and mastered alpine skiing and freeride.

The author says: “In 2006, I went to India, lived there for four months and shortly before leaving I asked Swami Bramdev, the mentor of the ashram where I lived, what should I do next. He looked at the Panasonic point-and-shoot camera in my hands and said: “Shoot!” Blessed, that is. The next year, the point-and-shoot camera broke down, and I borrowed a friend’s “Zenith” to film. That’s how it all started. Then there were the first photography courses with the Italian Paolo Del Elche. He gave content and depth that I still, often unsuccessfully, seek in photography, and showed that photography is a way of communicating with the world. Next was the Galperin Faculty of Photojournalists, where Pavel Mikhailovich Markin taught us how not to be lazy, gave us the basics of photographic ethics and much more useful things.”

It was alpine skiing and freeride that taught Kirill special vision, the ability to peer into the textures of snow and ice conditions. The success of an ascent or descent on skis depends on this vital skill.

The photographer’s gaze allowed the author to see beauty: “In 2008, it was cold in the Khibiny Mountains, but we walked around happily. The relief sastrugi and the snow thrown over them captivated me, but I didn’t get a photo then. In 2015, I shot a successful vertical series of ice in Bezengi in the Caucasus and realized that photographs of differently frozen water could be the basis for an exhibition.”

Sastruga is a narrow and hard ridge of snow formed as a result of snow erosion by wind. Skiers, freeriders and climbers have their own slang that defines different conditions of snow and ice: bottled winter ice, soft summer ice, firn, concrete, foam, plump, porridge, crust, spring lard… An attentive viewer can try to detect all these “aggregate state”, looking at mountain landscapes and photographic sketches of the author.

Mountains in Kirill Ivanov’s photographs acquire a human dimension; they do not overwhelm a person with their beauty and grandeur. Snow and ice here turn into abstraction, and landscapes into graphic works.

about the author

Kirill Ivanov was born in 1978 in Leningrad. In 2008, he studied at the creative workshop of Italian photographer Paolo Del Elche. In 2011, he graduated from the Faculty of Photojournalists named after Yu. A. Galperin at the St. Petersburg House of Journalists. The author’s works were presented at exhibitions at the Hermitage Youth Center, the Manege Central Exhibition Hall and the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, at the Central House of Artists in Moscow, as well as at the Apatit Museum and Exhibition Center in the city of Kirovsk, Murmansk region.