Alexey Vanushkin. Merry-Go-Round
“’FotoDepartament” Gallery
presents an exhibition according to its program for young photographers “Green”:
Alexey Vanushkin
Merry-Go-Round
30th of May – 25th of June 2010
Opening: 30th of May / during the day
Place: “FotoDepartament” Gallery
One cold winter evening of 2008, in the center of Novosibirsk, Russia, I bumped into a friend, whom I haven’t seen for years. A week later, he brought me into the teenage world and I’ve started my journey through the banal and everyday of 20 year olds, but with a camera.
Camera gave me a purpose for “being” somewhere, with someone, a purpose for experiencing and for compassion, for it all could be recorded. A photograph suddenly gave me a chance to grasp everything at once – the people, their feelings, details and the atmosphere. And it’s very much alike meditation, which answers many questions about life, like a buddhist koan – some truth, which can’t be reached by logic reflection but is understood through observation and experience.
And everywhere I went something was wrong, people were moving, dancing, laughing and getting angry, playing and sleeping with each other, but for a moment, when they were left to themselves, one could see their inner feelings. And one could see that they were lost, tired. That feeling was so in the air, even the city streets and the landscape seemed to reflect it. Bars, our houses and the college auditoriums were all soaked with that feeling. As was every relationship.
In another town, among other people, I now understand it. It was a merry-go-round, which we were riding since childhood and had a great time, going round and round, through the same situations, laughed, cried, loved, had fights, but it was an attraction. But then came the time, when passengers grown up and became too big for a merry-go-round, whether they understand it or not. Coming of age is the time when we become too big to pretend we are kids. I know for sure, there are people out there who don’t want to acknowledge that and the ones want to get off a carousel. But both don’t know what to do next.
Alexey Vanushkin
Book: Alexey Vanushkin “Merry-Go-Round”
For the first the exhibition in “Fotodepartament” gallery is accompanied by the book. For publication we are using the international publishing and sales system – “Blurb”, which allows us to print the book on demand. Ordering information and link will soon be put on gallery website – www.fotodepartament.ru
That book will be the first in a series which would accompany the exhibitions in “FotoDepartament” gallery. Not a regular exhibition catalogs, but books, magazines and zines.
The “Merry-Go-Round” book will be a result of Alexey Vanushkin’s three years of documentary work about young generation in Russia, Novosibirsk, which he’s a part of. “Merry-Go-Round” is a book of intimate stories of few youngsters who have to step into their twenties and lose their bright but empty teenage world, written down in photographs and words.
Feauturing around 150 color and b&w photographs on 200 pages, accompanied by the handwritten text by author and an essay by the curator of FotoDepartament gallery and photography critic Nadya Sheremetova, in two languages – english and russian.
You can order the “Merry-Go-Round” book at Blurb!
Vanushkin Alexey
(born 1988, Novosibirsk, Russia)
Education:
2004-2009 graduate of the local college of arts
2008-2010 online documentary photography workshops [OR]EDU by “Objective Reality Foundation”
2010 Noor-Nikon documentary photography workshop in Saint-Petersburg with Nina Berman, Yuri Kozyrev and Jan Grarup
Publications:
WirtschaftsWoche, “60th parallel”, “Seance”.
FotoDepartament Gallery – is the unique photography gallery in Saint-Petersburg. First the gallery presents contemporary Russian art and documentary photography. The exhibition program of the gallery includes three directions of work named as three channels of photography – RGB:
Red /Red Light – – the program dedicated to the authors’ techniques of manual print.
Green – program of emerging photographers exhibitions.
Blue – series of exhibitions by well-known and experienced Russian and foreign photographers.
For press:
Tel. +7 (901) 301-7994
e-mail: press@fotodepartament.ru
All photographs are available for purchase. Please, contact FotoDepartament Gallery, Nadya Sheremetova
info@fotodepartament.ru / +7-901-301-7994
