Contemporary Russian Photography

Contemporary Russian Photography

FotoFest

Anna Skladmann, “Sonia sitting on the Bear Rug,” 2009.
From the series “Little Adults.”

March 16, 2012

FotoFest 2012 Biennial
Contemporary Russian Photography: Late 1940s–2012

March 16–April 29, 2012

Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

www.fotofest.org

The FotoFest 2012 Biennial Contemporary Russian Photography, opens in Houston, Texas, on March 16, 2012 and will be on view through April 29, 2012. The main exhibitions, created for the FotoFest 2012 Biennial, present three periods of Russian modern and contemporary photography, with the works of 146 artists from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine. FotoFest’s 2012 Biennial introduces an international audience to never- or little-before-seen contemporary Russian art practice and culture through the medium of photography.

The FotoFest 2012 Biennial is the Fourteenth International Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Art, and it is the United States’ first and longest-running international photographic art event.  More information is available on the Fotofest website at www.fotofest.org.

FOTOFEST 2012 BIENNIAL EXHIBITIONS – CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN PHOTOGRAPHY
The three main Biennial exhibitions, featuring over 1,000 works of classical photography, video and mixed-media installations, were organized by an international team of curators from Russia and the United States. These exhibitions look at the evolution of creative photographic art in Russia from the beginning of “The Thaw” (1950s–1970s) through the period of Perestroika reforms and beyond (mid 1980s to 2010), into the current period (2007–2012).

The three Moscow-based curators and scholars, Evgeny Berezner, Irina Chmyreva, and Natalia Tarasova, are joined by Wendy Watriss, Senior Curator and Artistic Director of FotoFest.

After Stalin, “The Thaw”, The Re-emergence of the Personal Voice, late 1940s–1970s
FotoFest at Williams Tower Gallery, 2800 Post Oak, Houston, Texas
In the twenty-five years of complex political, cultural and economic shifts surrounding Joseph Stalin’s death in 1956, the Soviet Union developed a space for the re-establishment of a personal artistic voice, even in one of the most closely supervised areas of Soviet culture—photography.

The exhibition features vintage photographic prints on loan from Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow founders Natalia Grigorieva and Edward Litvinsky, founders and owners of one of the first private galleries in Russia devoted to fine art photography. Other works come from members of Novator, one of the most important and enduring of the independent Russian photography associations.

A special exhibition of World Press Photo Award winners from the Soviet Union between 1956–1991 shows another aspect of Soviet photography during this period. This exhibition is organized in conjunction with CANON Ru and Cultural Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO” and presents images by 42 Soviet photojournalists.

Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation, mid-1980s–2010
FotoFest at Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter St., and Spring Street. Studios, 1824 Spring St, Houston, Texas
In the mid-1980s and the 1990s , the well-known reform movements Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (economic restructuring) changed the country irrevocably and vastly expanded the cultural openings of the previous decades, bringing about the dissolution of state censorship and creating extraordinary opportunities for an open examination of Soviet and Russian society.

Artists re-interpreted all aspects of Soviet political language and life, and often moved art into non-traditional spaces, bringing it directly to the public. Political and economic chaos in the mid 1990s led artists became more openly critical, confronting traditional Soviet mores and parodying the external realities of Soviet-Russian life and ideology. In the early 21st century, as the heady and often violent conditions of change began to stabilize, many artists turned toward aesthetic and metaphysical explorations of photography itself. It was a twenty-five year period of remarkable diversity and creativity in Russian photography.

The Young Generation, 2007-2012
FotoFest Headquarters at Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas
Unlike their predecessors, the young generation of Russian artists today has little direct experience with Soviet Communism. Growing up after its collapse, they began their careers as part of a globally-connected, consumerist and individual-oriented society. Although some have the means to leave Russia to study art in Western Europe and the U.S., many others continue to work inside Russia. In contrast to the sharply ironic and outward-looking artists of the Perestroika periods, younger artists are looking inward, immersed in their own personal experiences and the psychological dilemmas of growing up in modern-day Russia.

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