On view: March 16–April 29, 2012
Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine St. Houston, TX 77002
Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring St. Houston, TX 77007
Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter St, Houston, TX 77007
Williams Towers, 2800 Post Oak Blvd. Houston, TX 77056
Installation view of the FotoFest 2012 Biennial Contemporary Russian Photography at FotoFest. Photo courtesy of Nash Baker.
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. The Biennial explores modern and contemporary Russian photographic history over the last five decades, from the post-Stalinist period of the 1950s to the present day. Three main exhibitions, created for the FotoFest 2012 Biennial, present three periods of Russian modern and contemporary photography, with the works of 142 artists from Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine: After Stalin, “The Thaw”, The Re-emergence of the Personal Voice (1950s-1970s), Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation (1980s-2010), and The Young Generation (2009-2012). These exhibitions are accompanied by a special exhibition of Soviet photojournalists who were winners of the World Press Photo Awards from 1950-1991. Of the works, on loan from private collections and the archives of the artists themselves, many are being shown for the first time outside of Russia.
With a population of 143 million people, Russia spans two continents and nine time zones, while its citizens speak 28 languages. It is a global powerhouse fitfully engaged with capitalism, consumerism and an ongoing struggle to define itself as a modern nation in the context of its own history and culture. FotoFest’s 2012 Biennial will serve to introduce an international audience to never or little-before-seen contemporary Russian art practice and culture through the medium of photography.
An international team of curators from Russia and the United States has organized the main Biennial exhibitions. The Russian curators are Evgeny Berezner, head of the “In Support of Photography in Russia” Project, The Iris Foundation, Moscow; Irina Chmyreva, Senior Researcher at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts; and Natalia Tarasova, a writer and cultural affairs consultant for the “In Support of Photography in Russia” Project. Leading figures in Russian photography and culture, Mr. Berezner, Dr. Chmyreva, and Ms. Tarasova have organized more than 200 exhibitions with Russian artists over the past 15 years. The Russian curators are joined by Wendy Watriss, Senior Curator and Artistic Director of FotoFest.
FotoFest co-published a two-volume 2012 Biennial Catalogue with European publisher Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). The 500-page catalogue features more than 300 full-color images by Russian artists and essays by Russian Curators Evgeny Berezner and Irina Chmyreva on the history of contemporary Russian photography, the re-emergence and evolution of the personal voice in Russian art photography in the late 1950s and the end of Stalinism through the Perestroika years into the present.
After Stalin, "The Thaw," The Re-emergence of the Personal Voice – The late 1950s-1970s
With Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 and the rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet government opened a period of episodic reforms that became known as “The Thaw.” Between alternating years of openness and years of constriction, artists managed to find independent avenues for self-expression. In twenty-five years of complex shifts in the political, cultural, and economic life of the Soviet Union, there was space for the development of a personal voice, even in one of the most closely supervised areas of Soviet culture – photography.
These reforms created the possibility of closer contact with non-Communist nations, including the United States, which presented two important and wildly popular U.S.-organized art exhibitions in Moscow in 1959 – Edward Steichen’s Family of Man and the American National Exhibition.
Many of the works in this section of the Russian exhibitions are vintage photographic prints on loan from private collectors Natalia Grigorieva and Edward Litvinsky, founders and owners of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow, founded in conjunction with 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, founded in the early 1960s by individual photographers and photography lovers in Russia. More than photo clubs, the intent of these associations was to open a space where photographers could present and discuss new ideas in photography, and re-visit the unofficial, often banned, works of Russian-Soviet photography of the previous three decades. Members of these associations shared historical and contemporary works not approved by the state.
Featured artists include:
Alexander Abaza
Yury Abramochkin
Victor Ahlomov
Max Alpert
Dmitry Baltermants
Anatoly Boldin
Alexander Borodulin
Lev Borodulin
Vitaly Butyrin
Michail Dashevsky
Boris Dolmatovsky
Vasily Egorov
Anatoly Erin
Emmanuil Evzerikhin
Semyon Fridlyand
Igor Gavrilov
Elena Glazycheva
Igor Gnevashev
Mikola Gnisyuk
Mikhail Grachev
Naum Granovsky
Alexander Grashchenkov
Zinaida Karetnikova
Valentin Khukhlaev
Yury Korovin
Jury Krivonosov
Vasily Kunyaev
Vladimir Lagrange
Galina Lukianova
Jury Lunkov
Makarov
Nikolay Matorin
Vilhelm Mikhailovsky
Alexandres Matsiyauskas
Eduard Musin
Igor Palmin
Sergey Petrukhin
Lev Porter
Nikolay Samoilov
Boris Saveliev
Lev Sherstennikov
Valentin Sobolev
Antanas Sutkus
Vsevolod Tarasevich
Sergey Ter-Oganesov
Mikhail Trakhman
Boris Trepetov
Oleg Tsesarsky
Isaac Tunkel
Alexander Ustinov
Alexey Vasiliev
Alexander Vikhansky
German Vorotnikov
Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation – The mid/late 1980s-2010
The mid/late 1980s and the 1990s were a period of profound transition for the Soviet Union. The well-known reform movements Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (economic restructuring) changed the country irrevocably and ultimately set the stage for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These movements vastly expanded the cultural openings of the previous decades. The 1980s and 1990s brought about the dissolution of state censorship and extraordinary opportunities were created for an open examination of Soviet and Russian society. The 1990s were a decade of unregulated capitalist growth that created a class of newly affluent business people and consumers of mass culture.
Photography and other art forms saw a burst of creative energy and multi-faceted experimentalism that moved in many different directions. The first years of Perestroika were marked by hope. Artists not only re-interpreted all aspects of Soviet political language and life, but they also often moved art into non-traditional spaces, bringing it directly to the public. Later, with the ensuing political and economic chaos of the mid-1990s, 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 two Perestroika exhibitions are the largest of the Russian presentations at the FotoFest 2012 Biennial. They present internationally-known Russian artists such as Boris Mikhailov, AES+F, Sergey Bratkov, Andrey Chezhin, Alexey Titarenko, Francisco Infante, Valera and Natasha Cherkashin and Gregory Maiofis as well as:
Yury Babich
Nikolay Bakharev
Andrey Bezukladnikov
Gennady Bodrov
Yury Brodsky
Vladimir Brylyakov
Vita Buivid
Olga Chagaoutdinova
Alexander Chernogrivov
Olga Chernyshova
Sergey Chilikov
Oleg Dou
Vladislav Efimov
Alexey Goga
Alexander Gronsky
Vadim Gushchin
Alexander Kitaev
Stas Klevak
Viktor Kochetov
Georgy Kolosov
Alexey Kolmykov
Yury Kozyrev
Nikolay Kulebyakin
Igor Kultyshkin
Nikolay Kulebyakin
Igor Kultyshkin
Vladimir Kupriyanov
Alexey Kuzmichev
Lyalya Kuznetsova
Mikhail Ladeishchikov
Sergey Leontiev
Alexander Lapin
Tatiana Liberman
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe
Nikita Mashkin
Sergey Maximishin
Vladimir Mogilevsky
Evgeny Mokhorev
Galina Moskaleva
Igor Mukhin
Timur Novikov
Anton OlshvangSergey Osmachkin
Rita Ostrovskaya
Evgeny Pavlov
Ilya Piganov
Andrey Polushkin
Svyatoslav Ponomarev
Roman Pyatkovka
Mark Rozov
Alexander Samoilov
Igor Savchenko
Vladimir Semin
Vladimir Shakhlevich
Alexey Shulgin
Valery Shchekoldin
Alexander Slusarev
Boris Smelov
Pavel Smertin
Olga Tobreluts
Oleg Videnin
Alexander Viktorov
Alik Yakubovich
Alexander Yakut
Evgeny Yufit
The Young Generation – 2007-2012
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. The artists in The Young Generation exhibit are:
Tatiana Antonuk
Oleg Borodin
Roman Bregman
Alexandra Demenkova
Kir Esadov
Maria Kozhanova
Vlad Krasnoshchek
Ivan Mikhailov
Karen Mirzoyan
Vasilisa Nezabarom
Alisa Nikulina
Margo Ovcharenko
Nikita Pirogov
Tatiana Plotnikova
Petr Rakhmanov
Dina Shchedrinskaya
Anna Skladmann
Alexandra Stukkey
Anastasia Tailakova
Denis Tarasov
Fedor Telkov
Daria Tuminas
Discoveries of the Meeting Place Exhibition
In conjunction with the Meeting Place, a special and popular part of the Biennial is FotoFest’s exhibition of work from the previous Biennial’s portfolio reviews. Envisioned as a showcase for some of the best work discovered at the Biennial portfolio review, the 2012 Discoveries of the Meeting Place presents work chosen by ten reviewers/curators from the 2010 Meeting Place. It is the ninth exhibition of this series. Like the Meeting Place itself, the Discoveries exhibitions often travel beyond Houston and have been a launching pad for many photographic careers. The ten artists selected are:
Lamia Maria Abilama (New York, New York), chosen by Felix Hoffmann, C/O Berlin, Berlin
Damion Berger (New York, New York), chosen by John Rohrbach, Amon Carter Museum, Ft Worth, TX
Erika Dietes (Cali, Colombia), chosen by Charles Guice, Charles Guice Contemporary, NY
Natan Dvir (New York, New York), chosen by Martha Schnieder, Schneider Gallery, Chicago
Pablo Gimenez-Zapiola (Houston, Texas), chosen by Ricardo Viera, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Bill McCullough (Austin, Texas), chosen by Stephen Mayes, VII Photos, NY
Monika Merva (New York, New York), chosen by Alexa Becker, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany
Nancy Newberry (Dallas, Texas), Chosen by Ute Noll, On Photography & Illustration, Stuttgart, Germany
Jhinryung Oh (Seoul, South Korea), chosen by Gemma De Santos, De Santos Gallery, Houston, TX
Michael Tummings (Munich, Germany), chosen by Hannah Frieser, Light Work, Syracuse, NY
ADDITIONAL BIENNIAL PROGRAMS
FotoFest’s 2012 International Fine Print Auction, presented vintage and contemporary prints by 25 leading Russian artists from the 1960s to the present. It is the first time that most of these works will be available to the U.S. and international markets. The works are carefully selected by the FotoFest and Russian curators, and donated by the artists.
Russian artists are being featured in many other Biennial programs, including artist-curator forums, book signings, films and exhibition tours. They are also participating in the Biennial portfolio review. FotoFest’s Biennial Bookstores will feature books of contemporary Russian photographic art as well as historical books from the collection of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography.
Founders of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow made a presentation about the Center during the festival’s opening week. Russian curators and artists participated in FotoFest’s International Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists. Four Artist-Curator Forums featured dialogues between exhibiting Russian artists and the Russian curators. Russian artists presented artist books at special book signings in conjunction with the portfolio review. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas” organized a Russian Film Program of feature films and documentaries. A public performing arts event Russian Spring Celebration was presented with the Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas,” featuring Russian music and dance at Downtown Houston’s Discovery Green Park.
Russian Partners for the FotoFest Biennial programs are: The Iris Art Foundation; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture; ROSIZO State Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; Russian International News and Information Agency RIA Novosti; Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow; CANON Ru, LLC; Cultural Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO”, Moscow; Russian Chamber of Commerce of Texas; Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas”.
Special support for the Russian programs has been received from Singapore Airlines, the Official Airlines of the FotoFest 2012 Biennial – Russia, and The Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York.
OTHER BIENNIAL PROGRAMS
Concurrent with FotoFest’s own exhibitions of Contemporary Russian Photography, over 100 independent venues, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Menil Collection, and the city’s major commercial art galleries, participated in the 2012 Biennial by mounting exhibitions of photography.
The Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists is the largest and most international event of its kind in the world: It brings together 500 artists from 33 countries to show their work to 200 leading curators, gallery directors, publishers, and collectors from around the world. As part of the Meeting Place, FotoFest sponsors four public Evenings with the Artist - Open Portfolio Nights, where the public is invited to meet with artists participating in the Meeting Place, view their portfolios and possibly buy work.
ORGANIZERS – RUSSIA
FotoFest 2012 Biennial: Russia is being organized by FotoFest in partnership with three Russian curators: Evgeny Berezner, Irina Chmyreva and Natalia Tarasova. Mr. Berezner, head of the “In Support of Photography in Russia” Project of The Iris Art Foundation, Moscow and Dr. Chmyreva, Senior Researcher at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, have written extensively on Russian photography. Ms. Tarasova is a long time collaborator. Together, the team has curated and presented over 200 exhibitions of historical and contemporary Russian artists.
FotoFest, along with its Russian colleagues, has organized exchanges and exhibitions of Russian artists and artwork for well over a decade. In 2002, FotoFest presented an exhibition of historic Russian Pictorialist photographers from the early 20th Century as part of its 2002 Biennial. Two years later, FotoFest sent artists and four exhibitions, including the well-known 911 memorial exhibition Here is NY, to Moscow and the city of Samara, and several Russian artists, including the art collective AES+F were featured at the FotoFest 2006 Biennial.
2012 BIENNIAL INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORS
Major Sponsors include: The Houston Endowment, Inc.; The Cullen Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; The IRIS Art Foundation; The William Stamps Farish Fund; City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation; Singapore Airlines – Official Airline of FotoFest 2012 – Russia; FotoFest Board of Directors, the National Endowment for the Arts; JP Morgan Chase; DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Houston Downtown; the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture; and Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow.
Additional Sponsors are: The Trust for Mutual Understanding; The Wortham Foundation; Houston Public Radio – KUHF News 88.7 & Classical 91.7; iLand Internet Solutions; HexaGroup; arts>Brookfield/Brookfield Office Properties; Vine Street Studios; Williams Tower Gallery; CANON Ru, LLC; The Greentree Foundation; Texas Commission on the Arts; American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP); Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau; The Oshman Foundation; Houston Downtown Management District; and Mrs. Mariya Hayward, Moscow.
Special Russian Partners: The Iris Art Foundation; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture; ROSIZO State Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; Russian Information Agency RIA Novosti; Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow; CANON Ru, LLC; Cultural Project “RUSS PRESS PHOTO”, Moscow; Russian Chamber of Commerce of Texas; and Russian Cultural Center “Our Texas”.
Media Partners: Louise Blouin Media – Art + Auction, Modern Painters, Artinfo.com; Houston Public Radio – KUHF News 88.7 & Classical 91.7; PaperCity Magazine; CultureMap.com; European Photography Magazine; and Prefix Photo.
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