Poetry of gardens

State Museum of Urban Sculpture
PhotoDepartment Information center/Bureau

present a photography exhibit

POETRY OF GARDENS

November 16 – December 10, 2006.

New exhibition hall of the Museum of Urban Sculpture
St. Petersburg, Nevsky pr., 179/2а

Opening reception will take place on November 16, at 16.00
A photo exhibition dedicated entirely to parks and gardens is a novelty here. It is not accidental that this vernissage is taking place in the year of Dmitry Likhachev, for he dedicated a lot of his attention to the art of parks and The Poetry of Gardens is his most read book. The authors’ works exhibit a number of ideas consonant with the thoughts of D. Likhachev on parks and gardens. For instance, that a landscape park is simulating not so much the nature as a landscape painting, and that in restoring a park we should never attempt to bring it back to its original state, and on the neighboring to the park symbolism, ideas of death and happiness.

The photographers mostly don’t try to make the old parks look younger, or reconstruct their original states, in complete accordnace with D. Likhachev, they see special beauty in the old parks. The quality shared by all photographs is that they are philosophical, meditative and inviting a  spectator to contemplation as well.
The parks of St. Petersburg have been created on the backdrop of stern northern nature, which sets a seal of certain austerity penetrating the photographs of today. And none of the authors is concealing fears for the future of our parks.

The exhibit is quite complex and requires attention from spectators for the photographic art here is mixed with already quite complex synthetic art of parks, transformed by the time. The exhibit is dedicated to the memory of D. Likhachev.

Authors: Marina Bakhtina, Gennady Golovin, Alexander Kitaev, Nadezhda Kuznetsova, Igor Lebedev, Alexander Nikiporets, Elena Palm, Elena Skibitskaya, Vitaly Smirnov, Lyudmila Tabolina, Alexey Tikhonov, Stanislav Chabutkin, Vladimir Chernetsky, Mikhail Sholk.

Curators: Alexander Kitaev, Olga Korsunova

The exhibit has been made possible with technical support of EPSON
State Museum of Urban Sculpture
Nevsky pr., 179/2а, metro station: Ploschad Alexandra Nevskogo, entrance from Chernoretsky lane
Open: daily, except Thursdays and Fridays, 11.00-18.00
Tel.: 274-2579, 274-3860

PhotoDepartment Information center/Bureau
St. Petersburg, Nevsky pr., 20, 1st floor
V. V. Mayakovsky library center
info@fotodepartament.ru
www.fotodepartament.ru