COMMUNICATION
The Ruarts Foundation presents ‘Communication’, a new large-scale exhibition of images by more than 40 Russian photographers with a timespan from the 19th to 21st century, ranging from studio portraits to post-conceptual works. Through the medium of photography the project discovers themes of collectivity, community and belonging.
Curator Daria Panaiotti defines the genre of the exhibition as ‘history’, which does not imply chronological completion or any attempt to compile a textbook list of names, techniques and styles. Here, ‘history’ becomes more of an organizing principle to carry out an examination of the socio-cultural space. This approach allows us to consider photography not only as a technical and artistic statement, but as a social gesture, a form of communication in which boundaries are built between what is “ours” and “other people’s”.
As early as the 19th century, family photos and photo albums served to affirm family ties or the unity of a group. Throughout the 20th century, which is rightly called the ‘century of photography’, it not only captured, but also changed our sense of belonging and community, our ways of thinking about ourselves in a larger social context, our relationships with others. In early Soviet photography the image of a crowd embodied progress and dynamic unity of the people. In official photography of the Stalinist period, pictures of a festive, orderly crowd asserted unity before the symbol of power. One of the leitmotifs of Thaw photography was the face of a stranger caught in the crowd — this random element became a criterion for the sincerity of social interactions. The Brezhnev period is marked by far less trust in the relationship between the self and the world: photographs emphasize non-involvement in mass ritual and accurately record disharmony in society. Contemporary photographers, sometimes unconsciously, deal with this tradition and find a way to resist the divisive effects of social networks. Or they turn to the cultural code — to images that evoke the effect of recognition and reveal our commonality to us on the basis of visual experience.
As the exhibition curator Daria Panaioti observes: “One aim of the exhibition is to draw a line of dialogue between generations at the level of larger concepts.” Visitors can get acquainted with the most significant authors in the history of Russian photography at the exhibition and assess how much it has influenced and continues to influence our sense of self as a part of society. The exhibition ‘Communication’ becomes a spectacular philosophical discourse about how the individual and society, ‘I’ and others, are interconnected in the consciousness of a modern person.
The exhibition will include works from the collection of the Ruarts Foundation, private collections and major cultural institutions: the Museum of the History of Photography, the MIRA Centre, MAMM, and others.
