Source: http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/2473/suburbs-in-contemporary-russian-visual-culture#.U4wQTyhs16V
The new generation of photographers were the first to embrace the edgelands with their eyes wide open. To fully explain the strength this requires from a visually aware person, it’s important to appreciate how ugly the suburbs are. Not beautiful ugly like Brutalist buildings but ugly in the most tacky way. The buildings are disproportional and the materials they are built with cheap. The shop signs look like shroomy sea punk visuals, and there's always an obligatory old sofa or washing machine abandoned in a little park, not to mention cigarette butts, empty cans and plastic bags — all details which don’t do any favours to a photographer.
Yet contemporary photographers still choose to embrace the surroundings as they are, with all their dirty imperfections. Their work plays variations on a theme. It could be a study of an urban landscape carried out with the help of 18th-century pastoral compositions, like the photos of Alexander Gronsky. It could be a complete portrait of a district: personal by Egor Rogalev, architectural by Alexey Bogolepov, or surreal by Alexander Bondar. It could be part of an ambitious project of mapping and exploring unseen Russia, like Max Sher. Overcoming pictorial ugliness and boredom is rewarding: the resultant image is the snapshot of how Russia really looks and has looked all these years unseen.
The new generation of photographers were the first to embrace the edgelands with their eyes wide open. To fully explain the strength this requires from a visually aware person, it’s important to appreciate how ugly the suburbs are. Not beautiful ugly like Brutalist buildings but ugly in the most tacky way. The buildings are disproportional and the materials they are built with cheap. The shop signs look like shroomy sea punk visuals, and there's always an obligatory old sofa or washing machine abandoned in a little park, not to mention cigarette butts, empty cans and plastic bags — all details which don’t do any favours to a photographer.
Yet contemporary photographers still choose to embrace the surroundings as they are, with all their dirty imperfections. Their work plays variations on a theme. It could be a study of an urban landscape carried out with the help of 18th-century pastoral compositions, like the photos of Alexander Gronsky. It could be a complete portrait of a district: personal by Egor Rogalev, architectural by Alexey Bogolepov, or surreal by Alexander Bondar. It could be part of an ambitious project of mapping and exploring unseen Russia, like Max Sher. Overcoming pictorial ugliness and boredom is rewarding: the resultant image is the snapshot of how Russia really looks and has looked all these years unseen.