The Russian Vision on Europe

Описание

Russian photographers began to depict Europe, as well as other continents, only in the last decade, when the disappearance of the "iron curtain" made it easy to travel around the world. In the preceding epoch this was possible for only a handful of very lucky Soviet citizens, who were permitted to go abroad, such as Georgi Petrusov, Dmitri Baltermants and Lev Borodulin. For many years there existed in Russia two myths about Europe: the official one - of the terrifying and dangerous society of inhuman capitalism, and the other, born in opposition to Soviet propaganda, - of the "earthly paradise" and the civilisation of total prosperity. Reality, which unfolded itself before the eyes of Russian photographers, proved to be something different. It was this reality which formed the reference network for the direct and unbiased approach of the authors represented at the Exhibition, encouraging their individual freedom and the trust in one's emotional experience. The thirteen artists who take part in the exhibition "The Russian Vision on Europe" belong to different generations. Some of them, like Valeri Sirovski and Alexander Zabrin, spent most of their lives in Soviet Russia. Timofei Parshchikov and Natalia Pavlovskaya are children of "perestroika", who grew up in new Russia. They are all united by an intentional absence of any fixed ideological or conceptual approach towards the "other" European reality, which is so often present in the oeuvre of Western photographers returning from Russia. In Europe they depict the same subjects, which form the existential basis for their work at home.