Russian Viewfinders
Whether we’re referring to the time of the tsars, the communist era or today, for so many of us, Russia is still too little-known. This film’s raison d’être is to explore today’s Russia through the gaze of a new generation of photographers who observe their environment without constraints and offer us singular and extremely creative images.
Freed from the straitjacket of censorship, photographers are eager to portray the contradictory mutations to which their country has been subjected. Documentary photography is therefore one of their preferred forms of expression. Since individuals now take precedence over the collectivity, faces are attracting more attention, and Homo Sovieticus has given way to the image of a population that is droll and sad, joyful and deeply despairing all at once. Private life and human bodies - photographic subjects banned by communist censorship – are back in view. Many photographers are fascinated by the immense Russian landscape and its historic and cultural context.
Russia’s image is often reduced to clichés: a post-industrial desert bowing under the burden of history, inhabited by poor people, run by a corrupt government. Although all that is part of the current situation, our intention is to go beyond the commonplace representations. We propose to cast a new gaze over well-known subjects, as well as to explore new ideas, in order to grasp Russia’s current reality in all its complexity. The experience will be almost like a road movie. Traveling across this land can be uncomfortable, dangerous and difficult, but that also means that there will always be little-known corners of Russia – magnificent, strange, off or scary ones – waiting for photographers to find them.
By immersing themselves in the varied worlds of contemporary artists, viewers will be able to perceive the polyphony and extraordinary vitality of Russian photography, which is a reflection of the Russian society that has, in one way or another, spawned it.
Freed from the straitjacket of censorship, photographers are eager to portray the contradictory mutations to which their country has been subjected. Documentary photography is therefore one of their preferred forms of expression. Since individuals now take precedence over the collectivity, faces are attracting more attention, and Homo Sovieticus has given way to the image of a population that is droll and sad, joyful and deeply despairing all at once. Private life and human bodies - photographic subjects banned by communist censorship – are back in view. Many photographers are fascinated by the immense Russian landscape and its historic and cultural context.
Russia’s image is often reduced to clichés: a post-industrial desert bowing under the burden of history, inhabited by poor people, run by a corrupt government. Although all that is part of the current situation, our intention is to go beyond the commonplace representations. We propose to cast a new gaze over well-known subjects, as well as to explore new ideas, in order to grasp Russia’s current reality in all its complexity. The experience will be almost like a road movie. Traveling across this land can be uncomfortable, dangerous and difficult, but that also means that there will always be little-known corners of Russia – magnificent, strange, off or scary ones – waiting for photographers to find them.
By immersing themselves in the varied worlds of contemporary artists, viewers will be able to perceive the polyphony and extraordinary vitality of Russian photography, which is a reflection of the Russian society that has, in one way or another, spawned it.