The Fairy Tale City
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Ruarts Foundation presents The Fairy Tale City – an exhibition of two outstanding contemporary Russian photographers, Sergei Borisov and Mikhail Rozanov. The project demonstrates two very different approaches to Moscow architecture and life. It is an opportunity to study the development of different styles in the history of photography.
Through the eyes of two renowned photographers of different generations, Sergei Borisov and Mikhail Rozanov, the viewer explores a city where anything can happen. A place of dreams, amazing stories and limitless possibilities captured in black and white images. Mikhail Rozanov, known for his monochrome minimalism and academic accuracy, presents works that emphasise the architectural beauty of Moscow, whereas Sergei Borisov brings the spirit of the times, portraying the city's historical periods and events through its people.
Sergei Borisov, one of the most sought-after Russian photographers at the turn of the 21st century, famous as the ‘bard of Moscow and its bohemia’. He always focuses on people, ‘heros of the times’, who embody the spirit of the city. Borisov doesn't merely capture the real world: instead, he evokes the city’s mystery. He creates vivid, emotionally rich images where people and their history become the centre of attention. Sergei Borisov’s works are full of romance and grotesque, allowing viewers to see Moscow as a place where every street can tell its own fairy tale.
Mikhail Rozanov, on the other hand, offers a more rigorous and minimalist approach, through the lens of neoclassicism, focusing on the Moscow architecture. The photographs, devoid of human presence, spotlight the city’s majestic buildings, showing them as silent witnesses. This brings a sense of calm and depth, suggesting the audience to see familiar forms as something sublime. Rozanov’s works convey the essence of Moscow as a fairy-tale city, where the buildings tell the stories of the past and the unfading spirit of the metropolis.
Together, Borisov and Rozanov create an exciting and multifaceted image of Moscow. Lyrical vision complements architectural elegance forming a rich palette of emotions and meanings. The Fairy Tale City shows Moscow not just as a physical space, but as a magical kingdom, full of miracles and adventures. The exhibition comprises more than 40 works by Mikhail Rozanov from 8 different series, which were created over 10 years, and more than 50 works by Sergei Borisov, from the year 1987 to the present.
The Fairy Tale City project is part of a long-standing collaboration between the MMOMA and the Ruarts Foundation. As a result of this co-operation, the following projects were realised: Andrei Bartenev’s retrospective Say: I Love You!, Vita Buivid’s solo exhibition My love is not a stream of smoke, the Soot project, which united the works of graffiti artists 0331c and GRISHA, 0331c’s multi-part project ON THE HEADS, Shepard Fairey’s exhibitions Force Majeure, Sergei Borisov’s Zeitgeist, Yoko Ono’s The Sky is Always Clear, Sasha Frolova’s Fontes Amoris. There’s also an ongoing ARCA project that started in the spring 2019: every four months in the arch of the MMOMA Educational Centre, murals by different Russian street artists replace each other: Alexey Luka, GRISHA, Kirill Ashastin, Ivan Nainty, Evgeny Muluk, 0331s, NOOTK, Artem Stefanov, Dmitry Aske, Alexey Partol, SY, Petro, Misha Burogo, Dmitry Retro, DUSTO.
Sergei Borisov was born in Moscow in 1947. A photographer and chronicler of the Soviet underground: his pictures are world-famous and have been published worldwide in Le Monde, Photo, Vogue, Interview, Spin, Face and others. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked as an advertising photographer, and thanks to his official work with entertainers he got his own studio in Moscow (known as Studio 50A), which became a place for meetings, exhibitions and concerts of representatives of unofficial culture of Moscow and Leningrad. Borisov is still actively working and exhibiting both in Russia and abroad. Selected retrospective exhibitions of the author have been held at the MMOMA (Moscow, 2017), National Art Gallery (Sofia, Bulgaria, 2018), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia, 2021). In 2022, the exhibition Reconstruction was opened in honour of the author's 75th anniversary. The jubilee year was also marked by a solo exhibition A Tale of Lost Time at the Multimedia Art Museum. In 2024, Tempo, a new biography of the artist with personal stories and legendary photographs, was published.
Mikhail Rozanov was born in 1973 in Moscow. Following his studies at the History Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University, he joined the circle of artists at the New Academy of Timur Novikov in St. Petersburg, and emerged as an artist. The Russian photographer works mainly in monochrome technique. His works are remarkably minimalistic. A member of the Russian Union of Photographers.
Mikhail Rozanov is the author of numerous books devoted to architecture of classicism and neoclassicism, modernism and brutalism. In 2023 he held a solo exhibition Steel. Glass. Concrete, which was hosted by three museum institutions: the A. V. Shchusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, the Levashov Bakery Cultural Centre in St. Petersburg, and the North Caucasus branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Vladikavkaz. In 2024, the New Tretyakovka opened the exhibition The Wall and the Word. Russian Monastery on the Border with the Sky, some of the works were included in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. Since 2015 he has been working exclusively with Ruarts Gallery in Moscow.
