Exhibition of classic Soviet photography Leonid Lazarev "I live twice"

From April 27 to August 26 in the Gallery of Classical Photography there will be an exhibition of the classic of Soviet photography Leonid Lazarev “I live twice”, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the master.

The exposition includes several dozens of iconic works, firmly included in the golden fund of Soviet photography. Embodying the Moscow period of the "thaw", surprisingly accurately conveying the spirit of the times, his first amateur shots stood out among his works by contemporaries. Instead of the clear boundaries of applied propaganda, he chose the path of lyrical transience. In the end, it was the instant of the present that turned out to be more valuable for verification than the promises of unrealizable promises of a great future. It was in the real world that Lazarev met his heroes and tried to share their experiences, aspirations and hopes with them.

“The works of Leonid Lazarev were surprisingly close to the international artistic trend, which determined the appearance of photographic art in the second half of the 20th century. Surprisingly, it was Lazarev’s subjective photo art, and not the pseudo-documentary official chronicle, that was able to capture a more reliable picture of the life of the Soviet Union and surpassed the stamps of the official “art,” notes the historian and collector of photography Artyom Loginov.

The exhibition will mark the beginning of a large series of expositions of classics of Soviet photography of the 60-80s of the XX century, scheduled for 2018-19.

At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, a book of short stories by Leonid Lazarev “Bullet for Takumar” will be presented, in which the author analyzes in detail the life situations that accompanied the creation of a particular photograph. Actors of the Lobnensky Theater “Chamber Scene” will voice some of the stories.