The book opens with a “superb” explosion. It could be fireworks set off for a national holiday or the new year. Instead, the photograph illustrates the ongoing violence in Chechnya.
Davide Monteleone, winner of the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award, used the grant to shoot a report on Chechnya from November 2012 to April 2013. His work was exhibited in late 2013 in Paris and published by Kehrer as Spasibo, the Russian word for “thanks.”
There are magnificent forests and mountain landscapes in Chechnya. We get married, share family meals and participate in religious ceremonies. The capital, Grozny, is lit up at night. There are brand-new buildings and ruins, too. There are soldiers in the streets, checkpoints blocking the road, citizens in exile, wounded, maimed, murdered. Everywhere are portraits of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, and Ramzan Kadyrov, President of the Chechnya.
Monteleone shows all this in his excellent report. His photographs are perfectly framed, testifying with finesse of a difficult situation. A silence is perceptible, the silence of normalized terror. Control is above all psychological.
The viewer is not confronted with graphic images, but the anxiety is all the more palpable. “Even though I come from the tradition of documentary photography,” says Monteleone, “my goal is not only to inform, but to create images that are the interpretation of an idea. I want the audience of my work to get curious about the subject of my research and to start investigating themselves.”
The 86 black-and-white photographs from the book Spasibo help us understand the current situation. The texts by Galia Ackerman, an historian and translator specializing in the Russian-speaking world, and Masha Gessen, the Russian-American author, journalist and activist, help explain the present in light of the past.
Davide Monteleone (born 1974) started his career in photography in 2000, when he joined Contrasto as an editorial photographer. In 2001, he moved to Moscow as a correspondent, a decision that determined the course of his career: Monteleone has lived and worked between Italy and Russia since 2003, pursuing long-term personal projects. He published his first book, Dusha: Russian Soul in 2007, followed by La Linea Inesistentein 2009 and Red Thistle in 2012. Monteleone has been a member of VII Photo since 2011.
BOOK
« Spasibo »
Editor: Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award, Nathalie Gallon
Authors: Galia Ackermann, Masha Gessen
Artists: Davide Monteleone
Hardcover, 24 x 28 cm, 164 pages and 16 pages booklet, 86 duotone ills.
English/French
ISBN 978-3-86828-466-9
58 Euro
2013 Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg Berlin
The work “Spasibo” will be presented from September 6th to October 5th, 2014 in Germany : Fotografie Forum Frankfurt www.fffrankfurt.org
http://www.artbooksheidelberg.de
http://www.davidemonteleone.com/
http://www.fondation-carmignac.com
