As part of the 10th International Photography Month in Moscow Photobiennale-2014, the Museum of Multimedia Arts in Moscow (MAMM) is presenting an exhibition devoted to the great Soviet Russian reporter Vladimir Lagrange, whose work is today considered a classic of Russian photography.
Lagrange was born in 1939. While working for the photo department of the TASS agency from 1959 to 1963, he had the opportunity to meet the eminent Soviet photojournalists Vassili Egorov and Nikolaï Koulechov, who had a great influence on his opinions and working methods. In 1963, Lagrande took part in his first international exhibition, in Budapest, where he was awarded the Gold Medal for his photograph “The Little Ballerinas,” taken in the dance studio of the newly built Pioneer Palace in the Lenin Hills.
The years of the “thaw” were a very special time in Soviet history. The atmosphere of the country began to change imperceptibly. Lagrange’s famous photograph “The Pigeons,” published in a two-page spread in the magazine Sovetskoyé Foto, was something rare for publications at the time and a powerful sign of the new atmosphere of freedom. We see young students filled with hopes and dreams walking across Red Square after finishing their studies, while pigeons take flight above them in the sky. The traditional, lifeless, official photos of parades and meetings at the Politburo gave way to photos which, while staged, breathed freedom and shed a new light on the time period. The new generation of photographers used new forms of expression, professed new values, experimented with and sought out new means, new methods and new images.
Read the full article on the French version of The Eye of Photography.
