Territories of Desire : Contemporary Russian Photography

Territories of Desire, currently on view at the Tampere Art Museum during Finland’s Backlight Festival, is featuring young Russian photographers. We feel it is important to devote today’s Lettre to this panorama of contemporary Russian photography.

In a 21st century global perspective probably Russia forms that last territorial with so called “White Spots” on the map, spots that for centuries have accelerated the fantasy of nomadic traveler-scientists and searching explorers – today those white spots have transformed into synonyms for desired and deserved ENERGY for the industrial corporations of 21st century. Russia is a territorial for desire!

Contemporary Russia is also a relevant and exiting research field for migration, fluctuation and 21st century identities. After the Tsars it was Josef Stalin, the totalitarian ruler after the Russian revolution who has created and realized the vision of the Soviet Society – based on large scale and forced migration of millions of people in an endless and borderless territorial: from East to West to North to South to East… Urban Russia today is a multi-ethnic community with a dramatic diversity of side-byside
existing identities in a condensed industrial environment – in search for new concepts of living together.

This post-soviet contemporary Russian community has to and will find and define its way into the 21st century. It has to and will develop an integrative and sustainable concept of a joint Russian Identity, a project indeed comparable with the goal of creating European Citizenship, as desired territories. This contemporary identity research is in the hands of the young generation and photography is the medium they have in use! The canon is under construction, visual languages become visible.

After two years of fruitful cooperation the Photographic Centre Nykyaika in Tampere has invited the FotoDepartament in Saint Petersburg for a joint curatorial project as keynote to the international photography festival Backlight 2011 – Migration and Nomadic Living in 21st Century