Moscow Stories. XX century. Part II is made of 280 photographs of 50 leading Moscow photographers. We have collected the works of the recognized masters of genre and street photography, urban landscape and architectural photography, and photojournalism. Among them are Naum Granovsky, Nikolay Rakhmanov, Igor Zotin, Nina Sviridova and Dmitry Vozdvizhensky, Yuri Krivonosov, Mikhail Trakhman, Leonid Lazarev, Andrey Knyazev, Alexander Sliussarev, Yuri Abramochkin, Vladimir Lagranzh, Sergey Borisov, Igor Palmin, Vladimir Bogdanov, Vladimir Filonov, Igor Stomakhin, and many other photographers who captured our city in different time and from different angles.
Presenting the first part of the project in 2011 we understood that our task was not only to tell about the City itself. The exhibition had a tremendous success and one of the reasons for that was that it managed to show the variety of photographers’ styles and trends in Soviet photography of the first half of the 20th century. And today we are ready to present the second and concluding part of the project.
What makes the Moscow of 1960s – 1990s? What images does our memory hold? What did a keen camera manage to capture? It is the string of lights of the evening Novy Arbat street, endless queue to Lenin’s Mausoleum, dividing the Red Square in half. Dense puff over Moskva swimming pool and the glitter of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour domes. The meeting of the veterans next to the Bolshoi Theatre on Victory Day and barricades opposite the White House on fire. Or is it the Olympic Mishka (Olympic Bear) flying over the stadium? The Moscow of 1961 praised the first conquerors of space, directing high into the air steel and marble monuments in All-Russia Exhibition Center and on Leninsky Prospekt. The Moscow of 1993 deposed old political leaders – Dzerzhinsky Square changed its face as well as its name, its tenant was sent into exile to the last sculptures’ refuge in Moscow – Fallen Monument Park on Krymsky Val.
The city, however, is not confined to the events it faces. City means architecture, people and something that comes into being between them. This is photography that is capable of conveying the most subtle nuances and the atmosphere of a big city.
The opening of the exhibition will be marked by the presentation of the photobook Moscow Stories. XX century, featuring the best photographs from both parts of the project. There are special workshops and lections planned as part of the exhibition project. Further details are in the educational programmes section PhotoСреда.