On view in an exhibition at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow is the work of Mikhail Prekhner, an outstanding representative of Russian avant-garde photography, who, like others in Russia, has been forgotten and is now being rediscovered, little by little, several decades later.
After graduation from high school in 1928 Mikhail Prekhner started work at the editorial offices of Radioslushatel (Radio Listener) and Govorit Moskva (Moscow Calling). He then became a correspondent, and, in 1931, was invited to prepare comprehensive albums such as Pervaïa Konnaïa armia (First Army of Cavalry), Industria sotsializma (Socialist Industry’), and Pioneria (The world of the Pioneers).
Prekhner’s work was shown at the Masters of Soviet Photographic Art exhibition in 1935. The jury included such eminent figures as Alexander Rodchenko, Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Grinberg. A separate article was devoted to Prekhner. Attention was drawn to the young photographer’s unquestionable talent, his masterly skill and ability to use Rodchenko’s formal discoveries such as sharp angles, the oblique slant and shots from higher or lower vantage points, but the undoubted lyricism and freshness of Prekhner’s approach was also noted with admiration.
After a few years of a promising career, Mikhail Prekhner died, caught up in the war and a little before his thirtieth birthday. In August 1941 he was dispatched to photograph the fighting in Estonia. He was stationed there with a group of Soviet soldiers charged with maintaining the defensive lines around Tallinn. Like the troops who fought to their last cartridge, Prekhner recorded these tragic events to the very end and perished in the bombing on 27 August, the day before Tallinn fell to the Germans.
This new exhibition created by MAMM shows images by Prekhner that only reached the institution as negatives. They were preserved for all of the second half of the twentieth century by Prekhner’s daughter Natalia Mikhailovna. The majority of the photographs were not attributed, and the museum went on a real treasure hunt trying to clarify places, dates and contexts. For instance, in one of the photos a man is reading a newspaper. You can read the headline, “Flood in Austria”. This occurred in 1939, so Prekhner’s image can also be dated to that year. In another shot we can distinguish the name of the Udarnik sailing ship. The Udarnik and Pioneer were the first cruising sailing ships built in the USSR. They were tested on a large-scale voyage around Scandinavia in 1934.
The exhibition which is the second in five years to be devoted to this photographer, features pictures taken for the Pervaïa Konnaïa armia (First Army of Cavalry) album, photo reports on the First Congress of Soviet Writers, on the new Moscow, and reportage from trips commissioned by the magazines SSSR na stroïke (USSR in Construction) and Na stroïke MTS i sovkhozov (Construction of Motor tractor Stations and State Farms) in Oirotia (today called Altaï), Buryat-Mongolia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Odessa and Leningrad. Most of the photographs presented at this exhibition were taken in the 1930s. And they are now finally part of history.
Mikhail Prekhner
From 12th January to 18th March 2018
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
16 Ostozhenka Street
Moscow 119034
Russia
