Lyudmila Tabolina. POLYCHROMIA. The photo Automatic translate

The proposed project presents photographs processed by the polychrome method. This technique, known in silver photography as “re-development staining”, was significantly improved by Minsk photographers Albert Tsekhanovich and Olga Sergeeva based on the work of Belarusian scientists on the effect of dispersion of silver particles on the optical properties of images (see references). It was shown in these works that the color of a photograph can vary from yellow to blue-violet depending on the size of silver particles.

Polychrome processed photos from the author’s archive, printed over 20 years on various grades of paper using developers of different compositions. The method turned out to be very interesting creative work due to its unpredictability. It so happened that two identical prints after the same treatment turned out to be different colors. At times, the effect of solarization appeared.

My experience has shown that polychrome is a valuable addition to the endless variety of creative possibilities of analog silver photography.

Lyudmila Tabolina

Through the Looking Glass of Lyudmila Tabolina
The photographic world of Lyudmila Tabolina is real and surreal at the same time. The details of the photo image are quite distinguishable and recognizable - for example, the bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral on the Kryukov Canal or a horse in the outskirts of the village, and at the same time they are not from this world. Something in them is mirage, double, mirror-like. They lost some of the material flesh and clarity of shape, but they gained an aura of authenticity. Sometimes they appear as mirage visions. Sometimes they come to the viewer like phantoms. In a number of photographs, people, houses, trees exude a slight glow.

Lyudmila Tabolina has been taking a monocle (single-lens, soft-drawing lens) since 1992 and during this time she became not only one of the leaders of Russian neo-pictorialism, but also founded her own school, or rather, she had students and followers who work in the pictorialist tradition. For pictorialism in general, and for L. Tabolina in particular, a meticulous and multifaceted work on creating and printing photographs is characteristic - the author’s methods of laboratory processing of positive. For her, the negative is only a blank for future photography. She prints on different types of paper, achieving maximum compliance with the mental image, uses diverse photochemistry, uses different methods of working out individual fragments of positive. Each of her pictures is unique and exists in a single copy. Even if she prints several pictures from one negative, the attentive viewer will easily find the differences in them.

This exhibition consists solely of photographs "printed over 20 years on various grades of paper using developers of different compositions" (L. Tabolin), which underwent secondary processing. First, the pictures undergo a bleaching procedure, and then undergo "re-development staining". According to Lyudmila Tabolina, “the polychromy method turned out to be a very interesting creative work because of its unpredictability. It so happened that two identical prints after the same treatment turned out to be different colors. At times, the effect of solarization appears. ” Obviously, the original obtained by polychrome cannot be repeated.

The exposition includes photographs from four cycles: Petersburg, Village, Kolomna (the one on the Oka, not in Petersburg), Vyshny Volochek, and the Doll series.

The mirror-world of Lyudmila Tabolin, tactfully tinted during the secondary processing of positive, received a new intonation - light gained color, and “reverence for life” an additional dimension.

Valery Valran

Lyudmila Tabolina was born on June 2, 1941 in the city of Vyshny Volochyok, Kalinin Region. Since 1961 he lives in Leningrad, Petersburg. Graduated from Leningrad Technological Institute. By profession chemist-technologist, candidate of technical sciences. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was a member of the photo club at the Palace of Culture. Gorky and photo club "Mirror". Member of the Union of Photographers of Russia since 1992. Adherent of “silver” photography and hand print. A favorite working lens is the monocle.

The author of more than 40 solo exhibitions and a participant in more than one hundred group projects.

The works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum,

Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, Museum of the History of Photography (St. Petersburg), Yaroslavl Art Museum, Museum V.V. Nabokov (St. Petersburg), Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin (Moscow), Moscow House of Photography, Museum of Modern Spiritual Art at Holy Trinity Novo-Golutvin Convent (Kolomna), Photographic Museum “Metenkov’s House” (Yekaterinburg), Borey Gallery (St. Petersburg), Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky (St. Petersburg), the Museum "Tsarskoye Selo Collection" (Pushkin), Vyshnevolotsky Museum of Local Lore.

Curator Valery Valran
The project was implemented with the assistance of the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg