Alexey Titarenko is a really intriguing and inspiring photographer. He took my favourite style of photography which is street photography and turned it into a completely otherworldly experience of an image. His distinct photographic style makes his work instantly identifiable as he uses an incredibly slow shutter speed so that people’s movements become a blur. This is such an interesting concept as street photography is all about capturing individual, key moments of peoples lives while Titarenko’s work gives us everybody and yet nobody’s story all at once. I am goign to be taking inspiration from his work to consider taking some photographs of blurry movement of people. I want to suggest the presence of people within my photo book but without having solid figures. I think this will add to the eerie and dreamlike quality of my project. I think it works quite well to have no people within my den photographs as the absence of people is then heavily noticed. This way by using Titarenko’s form of photography i can include people but keep them mysterious.
His work is very political as he created the majority of his photographs in Russia after the collapse of the USSR when people had been seriously influenced by Socialism. He mainly photographed St Petersburg but he has also created work in Havana and Venice. He is an incredible individual as he chose to become an artists in a time and place where artists who didn’t produce propaganda work for the government were repressed. He only has one body of work called “Nomenklatura of signs” that he created under socialism in the USSR, the rest of his work explores the effects of this time period afterwards. Even one body of work however is an incredible achievement as it was displayed in a solo exhibition in 1988. He was lucky that he only began to produce work under Gorbachev who had a lot more relaxed views on culture and the arts than Khrushchev or Brezhnev.
“Through the prism of my native city, I attempt to show events that occurred not only here, but throughout the country – the changes, the catastrophes, and the human tragedies, which have swept this city and the people of this land.” – Alexey Titarenko
He wanted his work to reflect the human condition of these individuals living under oppression and how they were forced to assume one identity under communism. His photographs portray a real sense of uncertainty due to the lack of solidity and this dehumanizes the people in the images. This links so directly to communist oppression in Russia where people were expected to have one identity which matched everyone else’s identity; being a committed communist. His images present a lack of an actual person behind the shadowy blur and a real sense of living and going through the movements of life for the sake of it.The figures appear fragile and ghostly as if from the past as they have no solid presence in the image and so appear to have no solid presence in the present. This is exactly the metaphor I think Titarenko wanted his images to display as they show a link between the people after the collapse of the USSR going about their daily lives still being so effected by their past it is as if they are the past. The images show a transition of movement in a time where the people themselves are going through a transition of discarding old values and stumbling into new ones. Time seems to be moving all at once and yet is frozen, his images really causing a person to reflect on their own life. It caused me to question all the everyday movements and journeys i make, where to so many people i am simply another blur walking past them on their own journey.
The below video is the first of a series of video in which Titarenko takes us on a day photographing around his home town and really shares what it means to him to be a photographer. These videos are hugely insightful in getting to know the person behind the lens which in these images is so significant. Titarenko wants to reflect the history of his home town St Petersburg and the history it shares with the rest of Russia in his images. He talks about how walking around the city, alley ways or a courtyards will suddenly strike him from a childhood memory and he know he needs to create an image of that place. The places he takes his images touch him form the past and it is this connection which gauges to him the authenticity of his photographs. To an extent he see St. Petersburg as a city whose soul hasn’t changed, only the people.
I chose Alexy Titarenko as a relevant artists research as i wanted to add a sinister element to my dens and the show shutter speed makes people appear as ghosts. I though this could be quite an interesting concept to play around with having fragments of people moving around my dens.
IMAGE ANALYSIS
The above image is my favourite photograph of Titarenko’s and is probably also his most famous. The image is taken in St Petersburg as people go up and down the staircase. The composition of the image is really clever as it uses angles of harsh lines but these are softened by the lines ending in curves. The whole image feels very surreal and has a lack of presence almost in the lack of people and yet the reality of so many people. The grey and white blur really breaks up the straight lines of the background filled with buildings and the straight lines of the steps as it is just a mess of shadows.The barrier of the staircase stands out really prominently in the image as the grey blur of people really separates the background from the foreground. The barrier appears really solid as if it roots the photograph in time and place compared to the blur of life behind it. I really like the phantom hands which are placed along the barrier where someone has rested their hand for a while as walking. They are the only distinguishable factors which show that the mass is the movements of humans. The whole images feels very detached and it is only the barrier which really cements the image. The photograph feels really fragile and brings to mind the word “wispy”, the people appearing as whispers of smoke and whispers of who they are in reality. The idea of the people being presented as ghosts creates a really morbid feel to the image which is only intensified by the black and white of the image. The image is very dark with the background receding into darkness and heavy shadows in the foreground. The lack of any people in the immediate foreground in front of the barrier gives a sense that the place is deserted and yet in reality there are so many people. I think Titarenko’s photograph perfectly captures the human condition of the people in Russia. They are living life which seems fragile and easily wafted away after years of oppression and so it is almost as if they are tip toeing around their lives not wanting to draw too much attention. They also seem like the ghost of the people they could have been, as they have become different people to who they wouldn’t have been without communism.
The above image is more ghost like than the other image as it only includes two figures and probably had a slightly faster shutter speed. This means that the figures are more clearly distinguishable as people rather than a mass of grey movement. I think the colour in the above image is key in establishing the ghost like impression. Both the girls are wearing white dresses which fits with the idea of stereotypical ghosts being dressed in white. The slow shutter speed has also created an element of translucency to the figures and so in parts they are see though to the street behind. The idea that they are ghosts is heightened even further by how there is a man in the background who doesn’t appear as the forefront figures do and the contrast between the two makes the figures seem other worldly. The straight lines of the image, the buildings,the pavement also emphasizes further how the figures lack in a shape. They are made up of “wisps” of shapes especially their dresses which fade into nothing. I think the fact that the image is taken from behind the girls is also very powerful. It is almost as if these pure white girls have turned their backs on society and the idea of communism. They are walking away from that ideology and to something new, something more solid maybe.