Exhibition "Far Focus" Automatic translate

November 15 at the Center for Contemporary Art "Zarya" will open the exhibition "Far Focus", which will include about 400 photographs of Vladivostok from the late seventies to 2019. For the first time, the project will present a broad retrospective and the most “fresh” section of modern city photography. The exhibition runs until May 17, 2020.

“Many regional photographic schools - from St. Petersburg to Kazan and Novokuznetsk - could be seen in Russia at exhibitions, they were printed in albums and catalogs. At the same time, in many cities and entire regions, photographic practices remain undetected and little known in Russia and the world. “Far Focus” is our attempt to understand and present with the help of a medium photographs of how and how Primorye lives and how Vladivostok artists and reporters see it, ”said Alisa Baghdonayte, main curator of the Center for Contemporary Art.

The photographs presented at the exposition “show” the life of the big city and the whole region, revealing various ways of “peering” into reality and manipulating the image.

“The project“ Far Focus ”turned out to be an important experience for me: during the curatorial residence and communication with photographers, artists, gallery owners and museum workers in the art residence“ Zarya ”I managed to collect a database and archive of photographs, said Anna Petrova, curator of the exhibition. “The material turned out to be unexpected and interesting, both from a plastic and anthropological point of view.”

The eight halls of the Zarya Center for Contemporary Art reveal the genres and “viewing modes” shown by Vladivostok photographers: from the “production portrait” and the Far Eastern landscape to architectural photography and artistic experiments. The most popular photographic genre today helps portray others — entire classes and strata of society — and at the same time seek and find oneself. Pictures of the Dalpribor plant by photographer George Khrushchev, reports by Aleksandr Khitrov, and a series by Gleb Teleshov capture images of professions and small nations. Production and fashion photography alternate with documentary chronicle from workplaces, invited models are replaced by circus jugglers and acrobats, shoemakers and shoe makers - in the cycles of Ivan Speransky, Alexei Korotkov, Vladimir Shututafedov.

The city landscape of Vladivostok is being reconstructed in panoramas and architectural photography of Elena and Alexander Melnikov, and the massive Khrushchev and Brezhnev construction of box houses is poetized by Sergey Orlov.

The collective “body” of the city, its group identity is represented by a series of the “Holidays and Rituals” section, which includes Maslenitsa and May 1, rallies of communists and religious processions that demonstrate different moods and ways of communication: from strictly regulated to free and spontaneous.

Artistic photography - often staged and experimenting with the techniques of shooting, developing and printing - unfolds in the plot and conceptual series of Mikhail Pavin. The ideals of non-conformism and an alternative view are developed by photographs of Sergey Drobnokhod and Sergey Kiryanov. A separate section of the exhibition is photographs taken with a smartphone and snatching fragments of “streets and faces”, looks and gestures, colors and textures, bringing city life closer to the observer, flannel and viewer. In the "street photography" mode, Denis Korobov, Maria Babkova and instagrammers Pavel Nemtin and Leonid Zvegintsev take pictures.

In total, the exhibition will feature the work of 19 photographers: Maria Babkova, Sergey Drobnokhod, Leonid Zvegintsev, Sergey Kiryanov, Evgenia Kokurina, Denis Korobov, Alexei Korotkov, Yuri Lugansky, Elena and Alexander Melnikov, Pavel Nemtin, Sergey Orlov, Mikhail Pavin, Ivan Speransky, Gleb Teleshov, Alexander Khitrov, George Khrushchev, Vladimir Shututafedov and Yuri Yarotsky.