Exhibition "Big Ballet by Sasha Gusov"

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography presents an exhibition by photographer Sasha Gusov, which will show a series of photographs of the Bolshoi ballet troupe. The exposition will include more than 50 unique shots taken from 1992 to 2016 from the backstage of the Bolshoi Ballet, a brand that arose during the first and incredibly successful tour of the Bolshoi Theater troupe in 1956. After performing on the stage of the London Theater in Covent Garden, the famous The Bolshoi conquered the foreign audience forever. After publishing photos from the Bolshoi in The British Journal of Photography, Gusov gained fame as a talented photographer.

Sasha Gusov’s photographs perfectly convey the dynamics and expressiveness of ballet dance. Among them are beautiful staged portraits, and bewitching, subtly captured frames of rehearsals and performances. Filmed on the go and without additional lighting, they are extremely effective. “A photograph is a documentation of what happens at a particular moment,” the photographer himself says. And Gusov, like no one else, knows how to masterfully capture these random situations. However, he not only captures the event, but also skillfully conveys the nature of the moment caught. According to Andrei Konchalovsky, a film director and a great friend of Sasha: “Gusov’s photographs are not a reflection of life, but that unique coincidence of circumstances in time and space that a person with a camera“ caught ”.” In sensual, catchy and often ironic photographs, we see the author himself. “Contemplating the photographs of Alexander Gusov, I feel it comes to mind that to some extent each of them is a self-portrait of the artist himself… His best images even have a confessional character,” notes Konchalovsky.

Gusov began his outstanding black-and-white series in 1992 as a personal project, almost by accident finding himself behind the scenes of the London Albert Hall. So, from the ballet, Sasha Gusov’s path to photography began, he left Moscow for London in 1989 with the firm intention to stay there forever. Changing many professions in an attempt to earn a living, he got a job at Roy Snell’s photo workshop. This allowed Gusov not only to get acquainted with famous British photographers, but also to use the studio to work on his own projects.

After a U-turn in one of the most respected photographic magazines, The British Journal of Photography, Gusov began receiving job offers from the English National Ballet, Royal Opera House, Royal National Theater, The Daily Telegraph and The Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, ELLE and Cosmopolitan. He collaborated with auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, made reports from around the world, issued a number of books, photographed movie stars, music, politics, in particular, Judy Dench, Gary Oldman, Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Boris Berezovsky, Valery Gergiev, Mstislav Rostropovich and Queen Elizabeth II herself.