In the photographic museum "House Metenkova" (Ekaterinburg) opened the exhibition "Petersburg Boris Smelov"

in the photographic museum "House Metenkova" (Ekaterinburg, ul. Karl Liebknecht, 36, 2 nd floor) opened the exhibition "Petersburg Boris Smelov».

Boris Smelov (March 13, 1951 - January 18, 1998) - a cult figure of the Leningrad picture. In 1970, 80 years for many photographers, he was the ideal master, who, on the one hand, was free of the ideological environment, on the other - put and solve artistic problems photographic means, thereby releasing the photograph of the shop is closed, and placing it in the family Fine Arts. Already in pre-perestroika years, he was recognized as a classic in the Leningrad independent culture.

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In 1961, he first picked up a camera, and in 1968 already realized an artist. Rare case. Most photographers of his generation to this day if you do not consider themselves artisans, the masters of photography, but not artists. For the photographer's main goal - to make a "good" image, ie, technically perfect, for an artist - a quality picture is only a means to build a unique artistic world. "For me, any job is more important than the exact photographic images of nature, the author's view of the world, the human position of the artist. Without it, images are empty and cold ... Culture of the author is always one way or another reflected in his works. And, I think, without the love of Dostoevsky's philosophy, painting, Van Gogh, Mozart's music, not only myself, but my work would be poorer "(" Soviet Photo ". 1988. № 10).

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At the end of 1960 Boris Smelov acquainted with the works of J. Sudeka, and 1972 he visited the Moscow Manege photo exhibition "The Face of France, where a third of the exhibition occupied the works of Cartier-Bresson. It is on the influence of photographers on his general form indicated B. Smelov.

In the early period of Boris was under the spell of Dostoevsky. One of his earliest cycle is called "In Memory of Dostoevsky, and it can serve as fotoputevoditelem for" Petersburg Text "Dostoevsky, absorbing the yards and the gateway, the streets and quays, stairs and undress parade of Leningrad - to St. Petersburg, which was once inhabited by the heroes of Dostoevsky's works.

Boris Smelov worked in all the traditional genres of photography - portraits, reportage, still life, landscape, the main theme he believed "his city". In the still lifes are things of the past life of St. Petersburg, in portraits - selected residents of this city (the artists, poets, musicians, families, the elderly and the nameless old woman), in the landscapes - the architecture and ceremonial zafasadnoe insides, the coverage of the story - the lives of people and animals in this city.

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By mid-1970, Boris has emerged as an extraordinary photographer. In his still lifes of this period betrays a nostalgia for a bygone way of life of Petersburg. In 1980 he gradually freed himself from nostalgia and semantic overload. Items in the still lifes become self-sufficient, not tied to their cultural past, and gained a classical clarity. And finally, in 1990 in some still lifes, B. Smelov came to the use of objects as "empty" figures as puppets for a constructive solution composition.

The portraits B. Smelova rarely possible detect a smile. His camera fixed the dramatic tension, anxious expectation, internal focus, creative immersion, but never - joy, joy, carelessness, and other conditions that characterize the carefree, ecstatic living life. His heroes are not born to be happy and prosperous life, but to serve "their cross" in this dramatic, tragic, full of suffering the world.

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«In my photos the city occupies a commanding position, although in recent years to revive him (and the only reason), I have increasingly focused on people in the city "(" subjects ". 1995. № 1) - said Boris. Indeed, in most landscape photographs he has no people. On the one hand, people are too powerful sign that unwittingly attracts the eye and automatically makes the rest of the context, on the other hand, the city, "separated" from the people, becomes a timeless, metaphysical sounding.

Particularly interesting and little known is the last period (1994-1998) Art B. Smelova when he began to be used for landscapes infrared film: "Infrared film amazed me because it gives some new quality and a completely different graphical effects. Foliage in the final fingerprint turns white, as if downiness with frost, and all other things - houses, water - quite realistic ... Shooting on infrared film helps me to emphasize some cosmism the city, its facilities, epic, the significance of the tragedy "(" subjects ". 1995. № 1).

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B. Smelov began his journey with the photographer Petersburg of Dostoevsky and Gogol (city-mirage , a phantom, a creation of the fog, the edge of the earth, the threshold of death, causing fear and horror of real life, the chaotic blindness and outer sverhvidenie). Then he saw and was able to portray the eschatological foreboding in the parade, classic Petersburg, thereby connecting the two opposite poles in the iconography of the city. That is, transpersonal anxiety, as embodied in sustainable harmony classics, landscapes and tells the tragic Boris Smelov refined and sophisticated appeal.

Valery Valran

Source: metenkov.narod. ru