Vladimir Kupriyanov

Sixteen silver prints. Each signed, titled, consecutively numbered and dated 84 on the reverse. This work is number 3 from an edition of 5.

 Four Perspectives Through the Lens: Soviet Art Photography in the 1970s-80s, Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, 2009-2010 (another edition exhibited)

Vladimir Kupriyanov: About the Eightieth [1980-1989], Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 2003 (another edition exhibited)

Christopher Ursitti, Joseph Walker, and Paul McGinniss (eds.), Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR, New York, 1991, ill. pp. 2-5

Brandon Taylor (ed.), Photo-Reclamation: New Art from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Southampton, 1994, ill. p. 15

Diane Neumaier (ed.), Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-related Works of Art, New Brunswick, NJ, 2004, ill. p. 106

Victor Tupitsyn, The Museological Unconscious, Cambridge, MA, 2009, ill. p. 166

Vladimir Kupriyanov is considered to be the master of  the Russian conceptual photography and one of the founders of the independent artistic movement in the 1990s. In his iconic work, In Memory of Pushkin, the artist appropriates a poem by Alexander Pushkin that the latter wrote during his journey across the Black Sea on a battleship to Gurzuf (South of Ukraine) in August 1820. Reminiscing over his youth and carefree days spent in St. Petersburg, the poet’s lyrical verse is emotive and evokes the anguish and the adventurous spirit of a young soul, which are reflected in the turbulent waters and the sweeping winds of the ocean. Greatly inspired by Lord Byron, Pushkin later wanted to dedicate this poem to the Romantic poet in an epigraph to its published version in 1825.

Kupriyanov attaches each verse from this well-known poem to a deadpan photograph of a stereotypical “Soviet lady”. Executed in a passport-photo aesthetic these portraits are bland and speechless. The subjects are nevertheless easily recognisable in their very anonymity- these are the faces that one encounters every day, be it in a shop, a school, a library, or an idiosyncratically Soviet communal services bureau.  Wittily juxtaposing their dry, tired sobriety with the highly expressive language, which speaks of love, youth and boundless nature, Kupriyanov questions the hidden and forgotten passions of his seemingly unremarkable subjects. The series also act as a commentary on the defacing effects of the bureaucratic communist society and the authoritative grip of institutions that leaves no room for romance and creativity.