Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art
edited by Diane Neumaier
Rutgers University Press, 2004 eISBN: 978-0-8135-6779-2 | Cloth: 978-0-8135-3453-4 Library of Congress Classification TR85.B49 2004 Dewey Decimal Classification 770.947
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Photography possesses a powerful ability to bear witness, aid remembrance, shape, and even alter recollection. In Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, the general editor, Diane Neumaier, and twenty-three contributors offer a rigorous examination of the medium's role in late Soviet unofficial art. Focusing on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, they explore artists' unusually inventive and resourceful uses of photography within a highly developed Soviet dissident culture.
During this time, lack of high-quality photographic materials, complimented by tremendous creative impulses, prompted artists to explore experimental photo-processes such as camera and darkroom manipulations, photomontage, and hand-coloring. Photography also took on a provocative array of forms including photo installation, artist-made samizdat (self-published) books, photo-realist painting, and many other surprising applications of the flexible medium.
Beyond Memory shows how innovative conceptual moves and approaches to form and content-echoes of Soviet society's coded communication and a Russian sense of absurdity-were common in the Soviet cultural underground. Collectively, the works in this anthology demonstrate how late-Soviet artists employed irony and invention to make positive use of difficult circumstances. In the process, the volume illuminates the multiple characters of photography itself and highlights the leading role that the medium has come to play in the international art world today.
Beyond Memory stands on its own as a rigorous examination of photography's place in late Soviet unofficial art, while also serving as a supplement to the traveling exhibition of the same title.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Diane Neumaier is a professor of photography at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She is also an artist whose conceptually-based photography has been exhibited internationally. She is editor of Reframings: New American Feminist Photographies and served as a guest editor for an issue of Art Journal focusing on contemporary Russian art photography. Neumaier was a Fulbright Fellow in Moscow in 1994 and continues to work in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword
Gregory J. Perry, Director, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Preface
Norton T. Dodge, Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, St. Mary's College of Maryland
Introduction
Diane Neumaier, Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
Part 1: ON NONCONFORMIST SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY AND PHOTO-RELATED WORKS OF ART
Painting Versus Photography: A Battle of Mediums in Twentieth-Century Russian Visual Culture
Konstantin Akinsha, Art Historian and Independent Critic, Washington, DC
Soviet Policy on Photography
Elena Barkhatova, Head of the Print Department, National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg
The Force of the Medium: Soviet Amateur Photography Movement
Valery Stigneev, Photographer and Photography Historian, Moscow
Closer to the Body
Alexander Borovsky, Contemporary Art Department Head, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
Freeze Frame: Photography and Performance in Moscow Conceptual Art
Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, Independent Art Critic, Moscow
The Crime Is the Copy: Unofficial Art and the Appropriation of Official Photography
Ekaterina Degot, Independent Art Critic, Moscow
Russian Photography in the Textural Context
Boris Groys, Professor of Philosophy and Esthetics, Staatliche Hochschule for Gestaltung, Karlsruhe
Stretching the Limits: On Photo-related Works of Art in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection
Alla Rosenfeld, Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Naked in the Grass: Absurdity and Play in the Ideological Field
Lev Manovich, Associate Professor, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Nicholas Muellner, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Subversive Photography: U.S. Theory Meets Soviet Practice
Ernest Larsen, Independent Media Critic, New York
The Shock of the Posthumous: Vladimir Syomin's Caucasus Project
Jason Francisco, Assistant Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
The Special Case of Baltic Experimental Photography:
Uses of Photography in Estonian Visual Art
Sirje Helme, Director, Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Estonia
On the Verge of Snapping: Latvian Nonconformist Arts and Photography
Mark Allen Svede, Ohio State University, Columbus
Reclaiming the Salt of the Earth: Lithuanian Photography Reconsidered
Raminta Jurenaite, Curator, Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Vilnius,
Lithuania
Part 2: CONVERSATIONS WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS
Feeling Around: An Interview with Boris Mikhailov
Alla Efimova, Curator, Museum of the University of California, Berkeley
Unusual Perspectives/Fantastic Possibilities: An Interview with Igor Makarevich
Gerald Pirog, Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literature, Rutgers University
Hinting at Reality: An Interview with Alexander Slyusarev
Mikhail Sidlin, Independent Curator and Critic, Moscow
Selected Bibliography
About the Contributors
Museum Staff
Index
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Photography Soviet Union Exhibitions, Dissident art Soviet Union Exhibitions, Dodge, Nancy Photograph collections Exhibitions, Dodge, Norton T, Photograph collections Exhibitions, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Exhibitions
Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art
edited by Diane Neumaier
Rutgers University Press, 2004 eISBN: 978-0-8135-6779-2 Cloth: 978-0-8135-3453-4
Photography possesses a powerful ability to bear witness, aid remembrance, shape, and even alter recollection. In Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, the general editor, Diane Neumaier, and twenty-three contributors offer a rigorous examination of the medium's role in late Soviet unofficial art. Focusing on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, they explore artists' unusually inventive and resourceful uses of photography within a highly developed Soviet dissident culture.
During this time, lack of high-quality photographic materials, complimented by tremendous creative impulses, prompted artists to explore experimental photo-processes such as camera and darkroom manipulations, photomontage, and hand-coloring. Photography also took on a provocative array of forms including photo installation, artist-made samizdat (self-published) books, photo-realist painting, and many other surprising applications of the flexible medium.
Beyond Memory shows how innovative conceptual moves and approaches to form and content-echoes of Soviet society's coded communication and a Russian sense of absurdity-were common in the Soviet cultural underground. Collectively, the works in this anthology demonstrate how late-Soviet artists employed irony and invention to make positive use of difficult circumstances. In the process, the volume illuminates the multiple characters of photography itself and highlights the leading role that the medium has come to play in the international art world today.
Beyond Memory stands on its own as a rigorous examination of photography's place in late Soviet unofficial art, while also serving as a supplement to the traveling exhibition of the same title.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Diane Neumaier is a professor of photography at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She is also an artist whose conceptually-based photography has been exhibited internationally. She is editor of Reframings: New American Feminist Photographies and served as a guest editor for an issue of Art Journal focusing on contemporary Russian art photography. Neumaier was a Fulbright Fellow in Moscow in 1994 and continues to work in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword
Gregory J. Perry, Director, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Preface
Norton T. Dodge, Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, St. Mary's College of Maryland
Introduction
Diane Neumaier, Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
Part 1: ON NONCONFORMIST SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY AND PHOTO-RELATED WORKS OF ART
Painting Versus Photography: A Battle of Mediums in Twentieth-Century Russian Visual Culture
Konstantin Akinsha, Art Historian and Independent Critic, Washington, DC
Soviet Policy on Photography
Elena Barkhatova, Head of the Print Department, National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg
The Force of the Medium: Soviet Amateur Photography Movement
Valery Stigneev, Photographer and Photography Historian, Moscow
Closer to the Body
Alexander Borovsky, Contemporary Art Department Head, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
Freeze Frame: Photography and Performance in Moscow Conceptual Art
Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, Independent Art Critic, Moscow
The Crime Is the Copy: Unofficial Art and the Appropriation of Official Photography
Ekaterina Degot, Independent Art Critic, Moscow
Russian Photography in the Textural Context
Boris Groys, Professor of Philosophy and Esthetics, Staatliche Hochschule for Gestaltung, Karlsruhe
Stretching the Limits: On Photo-related Works of Art in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection
Alla Rosenfeld, Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Naked in the Grass: Absurdity and Play in the Ideological Field
Lev Manovich, Associate Professor, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Nicholas Muellner, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Subversive Photography: U.S. Theory Meets Soviet Practice
Ernest Larsen, Independent Media Critic, New York
The Shock of the Posthumous: Vladimir Syomin's Caucasus Project
Jason Francisco, Assistant Professor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
The Special Case of Baltic Experimental Photography:
Uses of Photography in Estonian Visual Art
Sirje Helme, Director, Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Estonia
On the Verge of Snapping: Latvian Nonconformist Arts and Photography
Mark Allen Svede, Ohio State University, Columbus
Reclaiming the Salt of the Earth: Lithuanian Photography Reconsidered
Raminta Jurenaite, Curator, Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Vilnius,
Lithuania
Part 2: CONVERSATIONS WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS
Feeling Around: An Interview with Boris Mikhailov
Alla Efimova, Curator, Museum of the University of California, Berkeley
Unusual Perspectives/Fantastic Possibilities: An Interview with Igor Makarevich
Gerald Pirog, Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literature, Rutgers University
Hinting at Reality: An Interview with Alexander Slyusarev
Mikhail Sidlin, Independent Curator and Critic, Moscow
Selected Bibliography
About the Contributors
Museum Staff
Index
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Photography Soviet Union Exhibitions, Dissident art Soviet Union Exhibitions, Dodge, Nancy Photograph collections Exhibitions, Dodge, Norton T, Photograph collections Exhibitions, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Exhibitions