Overall Winner Fine Art Documentary, Prix de la Decouverte 2013
Acquired by Bibliotheque Nationale de France
Unframed / Giclee Hahnemühle Baryta / Embossed stamp / Certificate of authenticity
Edition of 12 (Artist Proofs available) includes 50mm borders.
Shot during the residency with the IZOLYATSIA Foundation in the now occupied Donbas region of Ukraine. The site of the organisation and the gallery space a converted Soviet factory now an infamous prison and secret torture camp featured in the book 'The Torture Camp on Paradise Street by Stanislav Aseyev.
This image was developed as part of the series 'Bathers, Ukraine' and was part of the residency supported by IZOLYATSIA and mentored by the great Boris Mikhailov.
In Room 44 of the National Gallery, London, sitting quietly is Bathers at Asnières, 1884.
In our new age we can empathise with the irrepressible natures of Seurat’s anonymous subjects as they find space to express their humanity at odds with the encroaching industrial and technical revolutions. The factories are demoted to the horizon.
Bathers are a commonly re-visited theme by artists and through our social evolution over the centuries since the early renaissance depictions of privalege, this dogma has been a useful foil to record the human experience juxtaposed to a changing world. Cezanne and Renoir interpretations de-construct the privileged aristocrats dipping their toes into their private lakes. Modernism and post-modernism share this socialistic utopia bringing everyone into the previously elitist experience. Photographically we are left only with realism, some romanticised, commercialised and sexualised like Bruce Webber’s beautiful perfect boys in Bear Pond on a Gold Day and Ryan McGinley’s carefree youth’s.
Boris Mikhailov’s great series ‘Salt Lake 1986 reflects the notion of humanity finding a way to express itself under the most extreme circumstances. We will always find a crack of hope, which is the starting point in the eventual defeat of any oppressive state.
"I shine my bright and unforgiving light on the everyday and I am overwhelmed by the complexity and beauty." - RA
"The Skelton from which all the other meat hangs." - Boris Mikhailov
