Beyond memory : Soviet nonconformist photography and photo-related works of art / Diane Neumaier, general editor.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Neumaier, Diane, 1946-

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum.

Series:

Dodge Soviet nonconformist art publication series

The Dodge Soviet nonconformist art publication series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dodge, Nancy--Photograph collections--Exhibitions.

Dodge, Nancy.

Dodge, Norton T--Photograph collections--Exhibitions.

Dodge, Norton T.

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum--Exhibitions.

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum.

Photography--Soviet Union--Exhibitions.

Photography.

Dissident art.

Photograph collections.

Soviet Union.

Exhibitions.

Dissident art--Soviet Union--Exhibitions.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

xiii, 334 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum : Rutgers University Press, [2004]

Summary:

Photography Possesses a powerful ability to bear witness, aid remembrance, shape, and even alter recollection. In Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, the general editor, Diane Neumaier, and twenty-two contributors offer a rigorous examination of the medium's role in late Soviet nonconformist art. Focusing on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, they explore artists' unusually inventive and resourceful uses of photography within a highly developed Soviet dissident culture.

During this time, lack of high-quality photographic materials, complemented by tremendous creative impulses, prompted artists to explore experimental photo processes such as camera and darkroom manipulations, photomontage, and hand-coloring. Photography also took on a provocative array of forms, including photo installation, artist-made samizdat (self-published) books, photorealist painting, and many other surprising applications of the flexible medium.

Beyond Memory shows how innovative conceptual moves and approaches to form and content -- echoes of Soviet society's coded communication and a Russian sense of absurdity -- were common in the Soviet cultural underground. Collectively, the works in this anthology demonstrate how late Soviet artists employed irony and invention to make positive use of difficult circumstances. In the process, the volume illuminates the multiple characters of photography itself and highlights the leading role that the medium has come to play in the international art world today. Beyond Memory stands on its own as a rigorous examination of photography's place in late Soviet nonconformist art, while also serving as a supplement to the traveling exhibition of the same title.

Contents:

On Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Art

Painting versus Photography: A Battle of Mediums in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture / Konstantin Akinsha 31

Soviet Policy on Photography / Elena Barkhatova 47

The Force of the Medium: The Soviet Amateur Photography Movement / Valery Stigneev 67

Closer to the Body / Alexander Borovsky 75

Freeze Frame: Photography and Performance in Moscow Conceptual Art / Ekaterina Bobrinskaya 91

The Copy Is the Crime: Unofficial Art and the Appropriation of Official Photography / Ekaterina Degot 103

Russian Photography in the Textual Context / Boris Groys 119

Stretching the Limits: On Photo-Related Works of Art in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection / Alla Rosenfeld 131

Naked in the Grass: Absurdity and Play in the Ideological Field / Lev Manovich, Nick Muellner 177

Subversive Photography: U.S. Theory Meets Soviet Practice / Ernest Larsen 193

The Shock of the Posthumous: Vladimir Syomin's Caucasus Project / Jason Francisco 207

The Special Case of Baltic Experimental Photography

Uses of Photography in Estonian Visual Art / Sirje Helme 219

On the Verge of Snapping: Latvian Nonconformist Artists and Photography / Mark Allen Svede 229

Reclaiming the Salt of the Earth: Lithuanian Photography Reconsidered / Raminta Jurenaite 247

Three Conversations with Photographer-Artists

Feeling Around / Boris Mikhailov with Alla Efimova 261

Unusual Perspectives/Fantastic Possibilities / Igor Makarevich With Gerald Pirog 279

Hinting at Reality / Aleksandr Slyusarev with Mikhail Sidlin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-316) and index.

ISBN:

0813534534

0813534542

OCLC:

53831145