IMBALANCEissue 2

issue 2 | summer 201 4

IMBALANCEissue 2 | summer 2014

PEOPLE

Editor: Alexandra SoldatovaEnglish version: Olga Bubich

Belarusian version: Andrey HorvatWeb page: Maxim Dosko

Informational suppoprt: Znyata.com

Cover: Julia NazarovaInterview: Jana Romanova 4

"A Portrait with a Portrait, or a Life­Long Picture": Vadim Kachan 16"Not to Be a Photographer": Aleksandr Veledzimovich 24

"Persons without people": Tatsiana Lisovskaya 30"A Letter from a Silent Town": Katia Smuraga 40

Maxim Sarychev 58"Trolleybus Depot": Alexander Sayenko 76

"A Skier "Selfie", or on Self­Representation in Photography": Olga Bubich 84

­Jana, this issue’s topic is "People".Can one take photographs not aboutpeople?

It seems to me, one cannot. At every turnthere are people. Even when you hold acamera aimed at shooting nature, you stillshoot about yourself.

­ What is your photography about?

I have recently realized that whateverideas and concepts I elaborate I alwaysstart shooting as an emotional reaction tosomething. There is always someunsolved issue. And probably all theunsolved issues of mine are related to thequestion of why people come together ingroups, where they take their ideals from,how they identify themselves, how theyfollow each other, how the crowd effectworks or "what would Princess MaryAlekseevna say?" On the one hand, theseare some very simple things, but on theother ­ probably they form the very thebasis for social existence. It looks like Ihave some complexes from childhood ­kids do not let you play together in thesandbox, and thus you develop lifetimequestions addressed to these people.

­ When does a documentary projectbecome an art project?

Personally, I see no difference betweendocumentary and art photography. I thinkthey form one single field. I haveeverything divided into other categories.Into projects where people try to informothers about something, and those where

JANA ROMANOVAwww.janaromanova.com

people try to highlight problems, to find apoint of resistance, to pose a question insuch a way as to make it disclosesomething, making it visible for theviewer. That is I may conclude that in myhead all is divided into a monologue and adialogue, informing and attempting tomake art.

­ And are both the fields equallyimportant?

Maybe for me informing is of lessimportance, but it is also appealing. I wasalways said that I did not manage to takebeautiful reportage photos, and I didbelieve this. I do not feel the momentwhen I need to press the button when itcomes to newsmakers. Somehow I havealways been more interested in someone’sshoes or in the fact that a man in the rightrow was sitting at the next table in thecafé this morning.

There are photographers who originallyhave the feeling of geometrical,compositional, emotional correctness. It israther a gut feeling, such kind of intuition,which, in my opinion, cannot be learned.But it is okay if you have no feeling for aBresson­like reportage, you surely have afeeling for something else. It is a questionof open­mindedness in terms of what is"necessary" in photography and what youpersonally love and understand, not of

what is "accepted" or what "tough guys"do. To my taste, there is no question ofwhat is "necessary", there are onlyemotions and ideas, and then how formworks with them.

­Why should one do art?

It seems to me one should not do it.

­Why do you do it then?

I am not sure that I do art, I just havesome questions in my head, and there arecertain issues that are interesting to meand I do not know any other way to talkabout them. All other methods are notavailable to me. I have not turned out tobe a journalist. I am not good at writingtexts. For example, every time I try towrite about something more complex than"my pictures were published in such andsuch magazine" in social networks, inmost cases I am not understood at all ormisunderstood. That is, I cannot expressthoughts in such a way so that I amunderstood, at least in the sense remotelyclose to what I actually mean. And when Itake photos, I try to do everything assimple as possible.

­Why do you teach?

I lack education a lot. In general I am agreat fan of education and self­education,I constantly research and study something,I do it on my own, because my highereducation passed by my head and myheart. While studying at the university, Iwas dealing with completely differentthings.

Sooner or later, if you are going to dosomething serious, you face the lack ofstructured thinking, the lack of bigamounts of knowledge. I think this issimilar to a writer’s job. I have a fewfriends among writers, and if they have anidea of some kind, they start exploring thetopic they are going to write on, theepoch, the space, social trends, sometimesnew sciences. Similar things happen inmy head, at some point I realize that somethings really interest me. Right now I amvery much interested in studyingcriminology and I listen to a course oflectures on criminology. It is great and itinspires me a lot.

But for me in order to understandsomething it is necessary to retell it. WhenI read or watch something, some momentmay function as a trigger, as a strange andillogical association. Suddenly, one thinggets connected to another, and I definitelyfeel the need to tell someone about it.Generally, in the course of life I greatlylack a Watson. In a sense, I use mystudents as a Watson, I constantly tellthem almost everything that comes to mymind about anything. And for them, it alsoworks as a trigger that starts mentalprocesses and they also come up withsomething. I try to create such anenvironment where any person cansuggest anything, and often we generatevery interesting ideas in terms of how todo this or that project.

Besides, just for myself I try to sortthrough some phenomena of thecontemporary art or literature that I findinteresting.

When I teach or prepare lectures for mystudents, who are usually united with oneidea, I try to translate this idea throughdifferent examples of artists whom I likeor, vice versa, dislike. I observe mystudents, whether this idea seemsinteresting or not to them, and whatconclusions they can make of it. This is anongoing dialogue. I am very lucky that allof my students are extremely smart.

­ Why do extremely smart peopledecide to study?

According to my observations, whenmaking up one’s mind to studyphotography, today people do not decideto "study", but they only want to hear twothings: either "what are you doing is verycool" or "what are you doing can be coolif you do this and this." But it passes soon.

We all find ourselves together in the end,because it is important to have anenvironment in which good ideas comeup, an environment where you are listenedto, you listen, you have a sense of doingsomething common and someone whosupports you. And already in the course ofall this you learn something new from ateacher, whose work and way of thinkingare close to yours.

Everyone has a desire of being realized, todo something and be liked by otherpeople, and this desire is quite normal, but"be liked by people" should not becomeyour driving force. Maybe in this case onedoes not have to deal with photography,and certainly not art. In order to be likedby people today it is enough to have justvery beautiful pictures of sunsets, pugs,food and women. And to have them onedoes not have to be a photographer or anartist, it is enough just to like food, pugsand women.

You need to be honest with yourself, firstof all. And then with the person to whomyou came to learn.

­ Do you have the most favouriteproject?

No, I do not.

­ Are all of them favourite?

None of them. I consider being happywith what you are doing as a very badpractice. I am never happy with what I amdoing. As soon as you think that what youhave done is cool, it means that you arelikely to have done it badly. Since you aredeprived of any chance to look at it in adistanced way.

­ Are you a photographer or an artist?

If go deeper into the definitions, I am anartist, because I still use photography inorder to translate thoughts and ideas,photography is not my goal in itself, but itis the only thing I am really interested in,what I really love. I like to think that I ama photographer just because every shot Imake is about my love for photography.

Alphabet of shared words

VADIM KACHAN

A Portrait with a Portrait, or a Life­Long Picture

In 2003­2004 I started to shoot a series "APortrait with a Portrait." Each protagonistof a picture was holding his/her favorite(sometimes it was the only one available)portrait taken before, usually by anameless "amateur" photographer ­ inchild, youth or adult years.

Then I was interested not purely in thevisual comparison ­ as the time or theyears that had passed might have changedpeople’s faces. I also wondered what wassurrounding my pictures’ protagonists, theplace where they were living (I wasshooting them in their apartments), as wellas their reaction to what was going on.

All together was creating a story.Above all, the story of their lives.And all together ­ the country's history.

Ten years later, in 2013, I decided to returnto this series and photographed the samepeople, but with the pictures that I tookthen, ten years ago.Someone has already passed away.

This is how I got a life­long picture.

Minsk, 2014.

www.vadimkachan.by

ALEKSANDR VELEDZIMOVICHhttp://cargocollective.com/veledzimovich

Not to Be a Photographer

Once I wanted to be a photographer. NowI do not.

Photography, like any art, aims atreplacing life. Reality is transformed intoan image, memories ­ into a film andpeople ­ into square photographs. I amturning into my yesterday’s copy. Life hasbecome a project for public demonstrationin social networks or, at best, in some"contemporary art" gallery.

You can simply live. However, one mustmake a choice between "live" and"create." To do this you need to becomeBuddha, as Egor likes to put it.Photography, meditation and Jesus’father’s profession suit such atransformation perfectly well. As long asthis does not occur, and one really wantsto "create", it is better not to be aphotographer and take pictures. Here is aparadox, so much beloved bybodhisattvas, or a borderline. Life itselfdecides when to make you meet newpeople, and there is nothing left for methan simply pressing the button.

The hardest thing is not to giveimportance to the process and not tocreate "the unnecessary." Impatience anddesire to be creative generate "a copy" – apicture as the result of routineprofessional approach. My most honestportraits have been made on the "border."Border passes between people. In this

space, life has a chance not to become"art", whereas people stop playing roles. Icease to be a photographer, and a personin front of the camera does not know who(s)he is. The portrait of a Stranger appearson the film. That is why I dream ofhumility, self­denial, and of not beingashamed of looking at my photos whilelistening to "Ramada Inn" by Neil Young.Along this way a good picture is only theresult that confirms that the photographerwas sincere in everything: from a book(s)he read yesterday to the color of shoesand the camera model. An honest portraitis an indicator of the holistic and rightliving.

But one should not forget that everyonehas their own life, and following someoneelse's rules does not make sense. DaidoMoriyama said that picture was related tothe search of existing images. In a portraitthis does not work. Simultaneously withsearching you create what you are lookingfor. That is why a good portrait alwaysappears unexpectedly. It is always anuncertain experiment in which the rulesappear on the frosted glass surface andimmediately disappear.

A portrait is a sincerely createduncertainty.

Persons without people

To those who I have come across.

What a joy it is to know a secret aboutyou. And remember your miracle.Everything changed a hundred times. Andmemory is fragile and this truth worksonly for me. Over time the matter as wellas the belief that this is reality would fadeaway. Only shadow and these faces wouldrest.

TATSIANA LISOVSKAYAwww.tanya.by

KATIA SMURAGA

My dear unknown friend,

Allow me to tell you a story of the recentyears. To do this I will have to start fromthe very beginning, because being honestwith oneself is difficult.

I was born in a small Soviet town, withwide avenues, green alleys and an eternalconstruction site. We lived in the outskirtsin a new high block of flats with a noisyyard where everyone knew one another.My friend kept saying proudly that herparents found her in strawberries (not withbirds and the bees as all other childrenwere told). And I did not know where Icame from, my parents were always busyworking hard. Since childhood the"secret" brought me to invent storiesabout my origin and not only. My firstadventures began in the forest and aravine next to the house where togetherwith my friends or alone we foundourselves in the fairyland, and the worldgot infinitely expanded, until my momcalled me from the balcony to have soupfor my lunch.

Since then many years have passed, mysleepy district changed its definition into"a promising one", but, of course, ingeneral, it did not changed at all, onlydecayed and a sort of became quiet. And Idid not know anyone there anymore.

Having grown up, I tried to move to

another city, large and stone­built,and, as it seemed to me, a really,"promising one". However, my smallprovincial town always remained inside.

Once I caught myself thinking that for thelast few years I was actually failing tobecome an adult and start "living a reallife". I looked at the world around and didnot know what to do next. It was hard toadmit that I could not live in that new city,which did not manage to become a part ofme.

I returned to my "boring" provincial town.Rediscovering it for myself, I found outthat it was already more than a thousandyears old, but it was almost impossible todetect, to attribute. It was constantlydestroyed and rebuilt. I began to yearn forthe town’s past, which I could never seewith my own eyes, I had only its ghostlyimage left. The surrounding reality waspushing me away, biting me, onlyinspiring to escape to the imaginary. Andit seemed to me that everyone I cameacross in my hometown, was living in astate of internal immigration. Do youthink this is bad?I do not know.

I need to confess that I am afraid of thefuture, which is likely to be moreconcrete, rational and synthetic. But Idecided to do all I can and give up all theattempts to be "an adult". In future I want

A Letter from a Silent Town

to see more poetry than psychoanalysis,more naivety and innocence. After all, lifeis much more than all of our ideas aboutlife, isn’t it?

Dear friend, let life go on, even ifchildhood keeps resting.I hope that observing my friends’ eyes,you will feel some closeness to them. Letthe photos continue the story better than Icould do in words.

Hugs,Katia S. from Vitebsk.

February, 10 2014

MAXIM SARYCHEVhttp://sarychev.org/

***

Every day I talk to people whom often Ihave never met in person. Those areprogrammers and managers from differentparts of the world. It turns out that I seethose almost complete strangers moreregularly than my own relatives.

The pictures were made through webcamsduring business conferences via Skypeapplications and Google Hangout.

Webcams expand the privacy borders oftelephone conversations. Our facialexpressions, emotions and personal spacebecome visible to interlocutors.

ALEXANDR SAYENKOhttp://asayenko.com/

Trolleybus Depot

These are people, simple and at the sametime such extraordinary, as if comingdown from picturesque masterpieces.

And yet, these are pictures, pictures of acity no­one sees or feels, no­one eventhinks about its existence. The city of thetrolleybus depot.

This mysterious and romantic dark placewith incredible shades of yellow, greenand blue.

People appear close, almost in front of thecamera, keeping an eye­contact. For alltheir reality, they leave behind the feelingof a fairy­tale, like mysterious trolls whohide inside a dark tree trunk wheresunlight barely enters.

A SKIER’S «SELFIE»,

or ON SELF­REPRESENTATION in PHOTOGRAPHY

Olga Bubich

If you are irritated by people,who constantly photograph themselves,stop reading right here. They have won.(Gennadyi Zavolokin, «The World of the

Year:”Selfie”) [5]]

In the vast territory of Europe and itsneighbouring countries it is difficult tofind someone who has never heard a word“selfie” or has never experienced thattricky itching in the fingers caused by the

desire to capture oneself with a compactor a reflex camera, or with an iphone.Yahoo predicts the growth in the numberof photos with the selfie hashtag inInstagram to the point of no less than one

A famous episode of the participation of Pope Francis in the group selfie, which, according to massmedia, only enhanced his status of the bravest and most democratic leader of the Catholic church in

recent years.

billion [1]. In December 2012 TimeMagazine puts this trendy term for a kindof a quick self­portrait in the list of themost popular words in history.

Researching the World Wide Webarchives you realize that today the genreof a self­portrait has really reached itspeak of popularity: neither presidents, norreligious leaders or astronauts overlookproducing “phone selfies”. Why so? Ithappens not only due to the formal easeand accessibility of media resources andphotoequipment with the adequate imagequality, but, above all, due to certainchanges in the values of today’s people.The catharsis of individualism which

found its expression in the exacerbation ofthe function of representation capturedpost­Soviet countries, too. The desire todocument one’s own existence,multiplying digital traces in the wilds ofvarious social networks practicallybecame a driving need of each inhabitantof the earth in the age group “10 +”.

In the course of the 20th century,according to the authors of the book“Me/We Generation”, individualismboldly captured mass market. Economicdevelopment, urbanization andindustrialization only favoured the growthof individualism, determining a shift frombasic needs to the needs of self­comfort.

A group selfie from the author’s newsfeed in one of the social networks.

Now it is important not only just to eatsomething (put some clothes on, visitsome place...), but also to eat somethingbeautiful. A happy family holiday photosof on a coffee table in the living roomalone was not enough to confirm thateverything is all right with your life. Nowany person can boldly take on the role of aheadline in the press, harmoniously fittinginto a newsfeed of a couple hundred ofvirtual friends, somewhere among newsabout political instability, fuel prices orsales in a nearby shop. Thus, theresearcher Nicholas Carr in his workentitled «The Shallows: What the InternetIs Doing to Our Brains» argues that it isthe Internet and mobile phones whichhave changed the self­perception andthinking of “the photographing man”. Ifearlier people’s central motive was inrecording and preserving phenomena,now it is actually the production of newsabout oneself that comes to the fore.“Everyone has got his/her mouthpiece(LiveJournal, Facebook) and a theoreticalpossibility not only to speak, but to beheard,” ­ said Michael Kareev, the lecturerand blogger at “T&P”. [2]

As soon as the global scale headlines losetheir exclusivity and personalsignificance, the pictures of your Moscowfriend with a freshly shaved head mightfind their place as your Facebook topnews. Carr calls this trend “functionalnarcissism” which the average user needsto be recognized and heard of. “Selfie isjust the most convenient form to reachthis goal. It allows you to be quicklyembedded into the global data flow,” ­says the researcher.

The thing is that images are perceived bya person with a much higher speed and atlower costs of holding concentration. Ourbrain decodes images and short texts

(memes, statuses, etc) gradually gettingused to the chaotic way of thinking. Andunder such circumstances a regular five­minutes’ evening email check may occurto be keeping you online with the firstrays of the rising sun lightening yoursleepy face. “Just like a diver, I used toimmerse into the depths of the ocean ofwords. Now I slide across the surface likea water­skier,”­ Carr confesses in thedescription his online habits, summarizingthat today Google is making us morestupid, whereas social networks bring up ageneration of superficial Narcissuses. [2]

Moreover, selfie is directly connectedwith communication. The psychologistPamela Rutledge, for example, defines itas «a message, involvement into adialogue, encouragement or discussion ofone’s actions». [1] Ignoring suchmessages might be interpreted by theinitiator of the polylogue as a groundlesssilence in reply to the question «how areyou?». Being placed into an Instagram orsocial network newsfeed, self­portraitmust inevitably raise a virtual feedback,be noticed and commented. It may seemridiculous, but last week one of my 30­years­old friends quite seriously spokeabout dramatical changes in his relationswith a famous Belarusian journalist justbecause “she did not put enough “likes”under his Facebook posts and photos”... .

Nevertheless, the opposite trend whichcharacterizes the genre of self­portrait incontemporary photography also seems tobe very interesting to observe. While anordinary person continues to play roughwith colorful packaging and presentationof him/herself as “a social product” [1],people more sensitive to the depths ofintrospection (artists, photographers, etc.)continue to go farther away from the ideaof mixing market and self­representation,

making images of their own physical"selves" exposed to existentialexperiments. Thus, a portrait graduallybecomes an instrument of private search,where the individual photographer orsomeone (s)he points the lens at, onlykindles a spark in the viewer’s fantasy in

finishing up stories with numerousunknowns. [3]

The critic Charlotte Cotton believes thatone of the visual methods used bycontemporary photographers in theirattempts to transmit the feeling of anxietyand insecurity in terms of the messagesdecoded in an image, is depicting humanfigures whose faces are somehow hiddenor turned away from the viewer. Besidesthe angle itself, in photographs one can

also see objects that prevent us fromseeing the face of the person portrayed,actually only hinting at the impossibilityof recognition. The works of the Americanphotographer Lee Friedlander present aclassical example of such works. He wascatching his own reflections and shadows

in car rear­view mirrors, shop­windowsand even on the backs of random passers­by. It is hard to imagine anything more«аnti­narcisstic»: in the photo with a lightbulb covering most of the photographer’sface the very essence of the self­portrait issincerely postulated as egocentricnonsense.

Thus, the nature of a person portrayedremains unrevealed, the photographerdoes not provide us with enough

Valeria Pishchuck self­portrait

information to form our understandingabout the visual center of the photography– that of the human face. In search ofvisual clues the viewer is left to involvethe entire arsenal of empathy andobservation, considering, for example,various objects present in the shot (thechaos of the city suburbs, objects in theroom, clothes, furniture) and to do this ...(s)he is most likely not to have enoughtime.

Since we just need to slide on.

Lee Friedlander’s self­portrait, Hillcrest, New Yourk, 1970

Self­portraits by Tatiana Lisovskaya (left) and Anastasiya Shilina (right)

1 ­ http://m.total.kz/hitech/internet/polzovateli_stanovyatsya_idiotami_ili_glavnye2 ­ http://theoryandpractice.ru/posts/1913­budushchee­mediapotrebleniya­komu­nuzhen­mozg­kogda­est­google3 ­ http://www.znyata.com/o­foto/narrativ­photography­2.html4 ­ http://www.americansuburbx.com/series­2/l/lee­friedlander­self­portrait5 ­ http://siliconrus.com/2013/11/slovo­goda­selfi/

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