"Young Photographers of Russia-2020"

On July 3, an exhibition of nine winners of the portfolio review of the All-Russian Festival Young Photographers of Russia 2020 and the work of students of the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design at the Higher School of Economics will open at the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (103 Lenina St.). The exhibition is held within the framework of the 20th anniversary All-Russian festival “Young Photographers of Russia-2021.

Participants of the exhibition: Alexandra Vitushkina, Anastasia Kurenkova, Andrey Shklyaev, Arkady Korobka, Maria Sokolova, Marina Shukurova, Olga Novikova, Katya Berestova, Sergey Kolyaskin and students of the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design at the Higher School of Economics

An important part of the program of each Young Photographers of Russia festival is a portfolio for young photographers, during which they can show their work to photography specialists and receive their assessment and recommendations. The authors of the best portfolios get the right to take part in the exhibition program of the next year’s festival. In 2020, 9 authors of the best portfolios had the opportunity to show their projects at the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts in 2021.

Works of HSE students - “HSE. Portrait of a Generation ”is a collective image of young people of the 21st century. Here is what Konstantin Leifer, chairman of the jury of the competition of the Russian Geographical Society, associate professor at the Faculty of Communication, Media and Design at the Higher School of Economics, says:

“At the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design, we do not teach photography students to the extent that they graduate and claim to be professional photographers in the industry. Until. We try to teach them to see and understand photography, think and express their feelings and emotions through photography. Show your attitude to what is being filmed, to who they are filming. Therefore, do not judge strictly. This is, for the most part, filming of first-year students, yesterday’s schoolchildren, just getting acquainted with the amazing world of photography on a rather short curriculum. Until. We hope that photography at the faculty will be studied more deeply, and in the future we will be able to amaze you with the works of our students. "

Repeated laureate of the "Young Photographers of Russia" competition, secretary of the Union of Russian Photographers Alexandra Vitushkina (Essentuki) shows the project "Guiding Tangle". She says:

- In Slavic folklore there is a concept of "guiding ball". In fairy tales, he could lead a traveler to happiness. He led me to the sea. Aleksandra’s delicate, color-coordinated works with the main character - a fabulous red ball - fascinate with the vastness, the sea to the horizon, symbolizing the difficult search for their way in modern life, creativity, and relationships with other people.

The laureate of the IFR-2020 competition, Moscow artist and photographer Yekaterina Berestova, shows scans. Her 2018/2020 project is called Black Square on the Other Side. It would seem that it is difficult to surprise anyone with such a technique after the recognized master Svetlana Pozharskaya, whose scans are bright color, stop attention with detail and precisely verified composition. Scanograms of Berestova - others. Sketchy, filled with poetry and fragility. Black and white, with occasional blotches of color. Sensual. Deep. The watched viewer, perhaps, will see in them a very personal dialogue between the author and the Suprematist Malevich and Co., or the continuation of the eternal dispute about form and content. Ekaterina Berestova about the project: - I forget the concept of "plane" and step into the depths. It’s dark inside, the unknown is frightening. I will turn the black square out. It’s not empty at allit is full of logical figures and ornaments of my soul. I build images of them. The black square is a window that, if you look at it, is not so dark.

Andrey Shklyaev from Zura, laureate of the MFR-2021 competition, invites the viewer to think about the multidimensionality of the world, mysterious phenomena that everyone has encountered at least once: “Encyclopedias teach us that we live on planet Earth, with an atmosphere, continents and oceans, and the world subject to the laws of physics, where one of the main

concepts is matter. Matter is a concept that has not yet been fully explained and studied. Mankind is increasingly observing paranormal phenomena with signs of a "wormhole" - tunnels in space and time, convincing of the existence of parallel worlds and matter beyond the classical interpretation with 3 + 1 dimensions, and the theory of scientists about the number of dimensions required to describe the Universe, already accommodate from 10 to 26 multidimensional spaces. Andrey Shklyaev was born in the village of Zura, Udmurt Republic. He currently lives in Izhevsk (Russia) and Kuusamo (Finland). Shklyaev works with documentary and art photography. In 2020 he completed his studies at the Kuusam School of Photography. The work of Andrei Shklyaev was largely influenced by the master of art - photographs Yuri Pritisk,with whom he has been studying since 2020 and who speaks warmly about the work of Andrei Shklyaev: “With the first works of Andrei came a clear realization: - He feels! Thinks! Believes in what it shows! He projects himself! And through communication, I also learned that Andrei is a very attentive, sensitive and enthusiastic person. All these qualities are transferred to creativity, and they shine through his work, which is not a mass photography, but clearly stands out among many, both in concept and visual presentation. "which are not a mass photography, but clearly stand out among many, both in concept and visual presentation. "which are not a mass photography, but clearly stand out among many, both in concept and visual presentation. "

The changing world of plants that live next to us, literally behind glass, has been watched for many years by a photographer, biologist by education Sergey Kolyaskin (Chelyabinsk), a repeated finalist of the IFR competition. The "Glazingland" project is about a quiet world outside the window. Plants quietly whisper their innermost secrets to us. The very moment of imprinting is a meditative process. To see the wonderful in the simple things around us, the wonderful properties of our consciousness. Art critic Anatoly Razuev wrote about the series: “The glassland is looking at us. It is worth stopping and seeing. See how the "world behind glass" contemplates us. Contemplates our run, our passions, our daring. The leaves of plants, like the eyes of an unknown creature, float out from an unknown distance and, pressing against the glass, without blinking, look into our world. In their world, a mystical fog covers the glass with frost, blocking what is happening from us,and the rust of the patina of oblivion completes the abduction of reality. Immobility and Frost turn into ice, the glow inside which turns the living into objectless. Frosted stains on the glass wriggle whimsically, objectlessness triumphs. "

Multiple finalist of the MPF competition Arkady Korobka from Krasnodar Territory in the series

"PROJECTION" tells about what a person experiences when faced with an illness, and what can help him to emotionally cope with experiences:

“Illness is one of the most stressful experiences in a person’s life, with whom he is forced to be alone. In some cases, it activates the defense mechanism. He transfers the subjective mental content of consciousness to the object of the environment or everyday life,

projects an emotional state onto him. But when a person mentally returns to the experienced state, can the projection reappear and persist, or is there no longer a need for it? "

The project "Measuring" by Marina Shukurova, a Moscow photo artist, a graduate of the Institute of the Department of Photography and the School of Contemporary Photography Dokdock (St. as dark as the human subconscious - says Marina, “No one knows what is hidden in that darkness and what can burst out into the light. Therefore, many are afraid of the dark and do not dare to wander in it. I’m not shy. Above the Arctic Circle, sensations change, and the endless gray-white landscape is interspersed with flashes of either consciousness or anxiety. No one knows when the next seizure will begin and when it will end, perhaps someone will remain in an altered consciousness forever.Photography serves for me both as a catalyst and guide to the "upper" and "lower" worlds, and as a way to get back, like notches in the trees, allowing me to find my way home. "

"Measurement or arctic hysteria is a series of common pathogenesis, but different forms of manifestation of psychopathological conditions, provoked by being in the circumpolar regions and characterized by

sharp deviations in behavior against the background of a twilight clouding of consciousness, or an uncontrollable reaction to specific, inherent exclusively to the North, factors that lead a person into trance states akin to shamanic trance and berserker combat trance "From the book by Anton Platov" Arctic hysteria: between a shaman and a berserker "

The project of a Kaluzhan woman, multiple finalist and laureate of the MPF competition Maria Sokolova "Captured by Morpheus" takes the viewer into the ghostly world of dreams and, together with the author, experiences the sensations of sleep and short wakefulness:

“I can no longer sleep peacefully, sleep suffocates me, paralyzes me. At night I scream and wake up in a cold sweat, afraid to close my eyes. I try to move: I start with my fingers, move to my hands, move my legs, turn over. I fall asleep again. "

"Where I am?" - this is the name of the project of the finalist of the IFR competition, graduate of the photographic studio "Smile" named after V. M. Grishakov, Anastasia Kurenkova.

It is about internal contradictions, doubts and the search for identity and internal harmony of a modern person. About feelings, many social roles, about personal behavior: “Inside each person, several subpersonalities coexist, one of which dominates at certain moments of life or throughout its entire course. They replace each other, and now the person is already moving away from himself, from himself. What to do next? How can one find the same among all those “I”? How to understand who you really are and achieve inner harmony? "

A graduate of the photographic studio "Smile" them. V. M. Grishakova, participant of all-Russian and international exhibitions and competitions, including Young Photographers of Russia Olga Novikova presents to the audience the project “I don’t know”: “It turned out that I don’t know anything. Almost nothing at all. I’m lost. Asking myself questions about what is happening to me, I no longer find an explanation. I was enveloped in a web of thoughts that haunt me. Nothing happened. It was as if I had fallen deeply asleep and could not move away from this strange dream, from the new reality, where all the roads are shrouded in a veil, where I do not know where to go. I want to hide, retire and find myself again. But I got stumped and lost my vision of life. I do not know what to do next". Black and white photographs accurately convey the inner turmoil, the desire of the heroine of the project to escape from reality, to distance herself. Withdraw into yourselfunderstand yourself in order to return to people again.