Photo History
2020
Curator Tetiana Pavlova
Project participants:
Bella Logachova
Pavlo Zaitsev
Daryna Berdynskykh
Darya Hryb
Margaryta Zolotaryova
Alina Kostyuk
Diana Kulynych
Alisa Marakova
Yaroslava Repeshko
Anna Cherkas
Varya Chorna
About
Photo History
Photo History is an exhibition of emerging photographers from Kharkiv. Students and teachers of the “Visual Practices” Department at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in a number of photography projects trace historical and iconographic points of contact with the generation of artists who created the Kharkiv School of Photography, integrating photography into Ukrainian art. The teachers are students of the first generation photographers. Bella Logachova studied from Oleksandr Suprun, Pavlo Zaitsev from Evgeniy Pavlov. The cross-cutting theme of the exhibition is a reflection on the phenomenon of the Kharkiv School of Photography, its semantic and technical features (in particular, the experiments with the favorite techniques of the “Vremya” group).
Bella Logachova
Fish Sellers
2013
The exhibition presents two retrospective projects by Bella Logachova, created on the eve of the Maidan. “Fish Sellers” (2013), which she calls a “folk series of female portraits”, resembles the “markets” of B. Mikhailov, O. Suprun, and J. Rupin.
Bella Logachova
Homework
2011–2012
The second project by Bella Logachova, the “Homework” (2011–2012), is a photo book in which retouched analog and digital photographs are glued on the pages of a music notebook found at a second-hand bookseller’s market in Kharkiv. Handwritten comments give advice on everyday home gymnastics and expand it by mentioning the morning rituals of Soviet-era exercises. The concept of the photography project is defined as “the intrusion of the outside world into the intimate space of two young people”. This work refers to examples of a sharp self-portrait of the Kharkiv school and a way to tell a personal story.
Collective practices
2020
Curated by Bella Logachova
Artists (KSADA students):
Daryna Berdynskykh
Darya Hryb
Margaryta Zolotaryova
Alina Kostyuk
Diana Kulynych
Alisa Marakova
Yaroslava Repeshko
Hanna Cherkas
Varya Chorna
The photo projects of the young artists, again, tell about life in constraints, echoing the themes of early Kharkiv photography. Observations focus on the usual processes that are illustrated from an unusual angle as a way of searching in the field of conceptual photography. Thus, the research project of the Photo History exhibition demonstrates that important trends of photographic practices of the Kharkiv school work well in the field of education, proving the comprehensiveness of the phenomenon and its powerful resource.
Yaroslava Repeshko
Goldfish
2020
Daryna Berdynskykh
Quarantine Chronicles
2020
Alina Kostyuk
Not Phoenix
2020
Pavlo Zaitsev
MD330-340
2020
And finally, there is the research project of Pavlo Zaitsev “MD330-340”. He also appeals to the important areas of Kharkiv School’s photographic practices. The author talks about surreal walks within the self-isolation situation in the language of appropriated photography. “With the help of a Google service, I started scrutinizing every street in the area where I live. On the map of Kharkiv, they are marked as mikrorayony (microdistricts), with the numbers from 330 to 340. I was able to examine the appearance of each person or house down to the smallest detail. The peculiarity of this observation, which I translated into black and white language, is that the images are created and processed not by man but by a service’s algorithm, people’s faces are blurred, and due to the constant movement of the vehicle on which the camera is installed, digital deformations occur in the frame.” It should be added that the landscapes of the series created by the machine strangely fit into the visual paradigm, creatively reflected by the older generation of Kharkiv School, as if a genius loci inspired them to creation.
