Daniel Miller went to Russia in the spring of 2015 to give a lecture in St Petersburg. While he was there he discovered the work of Soviet era Russian photographers, all of them pretty much unknown in the west. That makes sense, if you think about it you quickly realize most of our images of Soviet times are propaganda pictures, ours and theirs. But Russia is a big country with millions of people, there must have been photographers shooting daily life, families, factories and sports and of course there were.
He started talking to gallerists, collectors and museum directors and over the next year and a half he constructed this exhibition of Soviet Photography, pictures made between 1930 and 1986, 36 prints representing the work of 23 photographers.
His goal was to show Russia as any other place, not the evil empire for the people who lived there. He found pictures of everyday life, a boy carrying two loaves of bread, a girl on her first day of school, a man giving boxing lessons to a child, industrial manufacturing, athletic events; the common humanity we all share. Some of the images are propaganda pictures made to convey a message to the populace but most are pictures made by talented photographers shooting pictures on the side, newspaper photographers or art photographers, people well known in Russia but unknown to the rest of the world. At least half of the photographers shown here are part of museum collections in Russia but have been unseen in America.
Miller didn’t choose the show by selecting the photographers but rather by selecting the images. “I didn’t set out to show such a widely diverging group of photographers, if two or three had done it that would have been fine with me. My criterion was to find the right imagery, to create a sense of the day to day life in the Soviet Union.” As a result these pictures are not about the hardship of war or famine but the quieter times when life is good and life goes on.
The prints are lovely, made in Russia by four or five different labs from the original negatives. Taken together they form a cohesive whole and they present a picture of Russia as it wanted to be seen by those who were living there then.
And if all this wasn’t already enough, Miller is currently in Russia choosing additional work to add to the show. There will be a reception at the gallery March 11th to welcome Leonid Lazarev, the celebrated 79 year old photographer, who will be there along with ten new prints of his work. Save the date, the (other) Russians are coming.
Andy Romanoff
Andy Romanoff is a photographer and writer based in Los Angeles, USA.
Soviet Photography 1930 –1985
January 19 – March 30, 2017
Duncan Miller Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, Unit A7
Santa Monica, CA 90404
USA
http://www.duncanmillergallery.com/
About Andy Romanoff:
