ESSAYS
IS THERE ANY FURY LEFT IN PHOTOGRAPHY?
I dedicated 2026 to analysing, wiping out and re-shuffling of my photography archive - tirelessly and brutally - no censor can withhold the nerve of self-judgement for that long. my vault is quarter-century old, yet it feels timelessly fresh & raw. in the midst of the process I realised that my artistic obligation, on top of being pragmatically self-criticising, also is the one of a philosophical character. I speculated ‘what is photography’ and ‘what is the mission of a photographer’?
photographer as a record/memory keeper, as an archivist, as a collector atmospheres, narratives & archetypes, as the one who sees the personalities - beyond the masks, the society - beyond the accepted norms & constructs, and the locations - as they exist on the other side of mind’s eye. photographer as a hunter-gatherer, permanently on the move, her gaze is snapping the reality quickly with either sharpness, or accessing it through a gentle contemplation. to be incessant is the oeuvre, to camouflage yourself in the shadows with a camera, like a vigilant spy, is a main stimuli.
does a photograph have an everlasting essence which can outlive the author? does it carry a piece of a soul of the person behind the camera? is, by looking at the photograph, the viewer can emphatise with how the photographer felt when taking the picture? how to measure the voltage happening in the first moment of encountering a photograph? how it can emancipate the viewer cognitively and sensorially, direct or mislead, be a sort of a deja-vu haunting you infinitely?
photographer as a psychologist? beforehand I positioned my camera on an individual, I asked myself the following question many times: how would that person feel, is there an unspoken consent given in a form of a slightly visible nod, or is it too invasive to their privacy? how camera, as an instrument and a powerful tool used subversively, transgressively, to elevate the ego, or to disseminate the vile propaganda, - can also a caring device?
image is a mood carrier, a reflective surface that hides the layers of attitudes - it is in the photography’s innate ability to show absence, to enact sorrow & grief. Images pierce through your feelings, they are the fractured memories reconstructed afresh. the wholeness versus the incompleteness and fragmentation - the interplay of dualities, of mundanity and of force extraordinaire, of being present in the moment, of shifting the focus with the sole purpose to train the eye to never lose curiosity. an assemblage of the photographs is telling a disjointed, provoking, uneasy, painful story? does it have to be continuous, time-bound, or rather a non-chronicle that makes the viewer’s mind go loose in the search of meaning by the way of heart? it is in the dusk rather than in the places full of artificial light, in the muddy rather than in crystalline stream, in minor, peripheral motives rather than in major testaments. photography equals the act of love-making.
I frequently equal the process of taking and editing the photographs to how musicians compose and refine their pieces. music is the air, photography is the light - both of the arts are “non-physical” in their origin, they are actualised through the immateriality of frequencies, their “ontologies” are analogous, as much as the mechanisms of reproducing the sound and the image have a lot in common. if there is another art on which music nowadays depends on, it is exclusively photography.
what does the corporeality of image conceal? how photography speaks through the oblique signs? does a photograph need to be printed to allow an extra loop of emotion in, or it can radiate through the screen and speak in the visual language that transcribes time & space differently? how a particular size of the grain and a slight adjustment of the curve can be elevate a certain episode? a barely perceivable gleam through the waning dust, an uneven framing, a spontaneously caught reflection can tell the viewer more than the sterility of overly conceptualised images which exclude any feeling yet celebrate technical precision.
my approach to photography is marxian. I am not taking into the account any image-making serving the purpose of capitalism, or advertisement - instead, I only refer to photography as to the form of ‘outsider’ art, self-sufficient and independent of other industries. the photographer is the labourer, the pioneer and voyager who owns her means of production autonomously and patches her visual manuscripts of one’s own volition. how many times did you force yourself to become a foreigner even on your own doorstep? how frequently did you embraced an unfamiliar, hazardous setting steered by desire make it your own playground?
the discussion about the genres’ specificity and the restless theoretical attempts to compartmentalise a certain work are, in fact, futile, derogatory & diminishing - only those, who are terrified of praxis, of dirty field work, of messing with chemicals, who are stuck in the inadequately populated lecture room or suffocating in a commercial studio, fixate on the outdated subjects. if the work is unique, it shatters the constraints of the typology’s divisiveness. categorisation & grouping are created with the sole purpose to interpret the image in order to promote it. the measure for the uniqueness nowadays is diversification and being ahead of yourself so the one effectively wards off all the bids to be narrowed down.
with the spread of the image-making devices being at its peak, people did lose the ability to concentrate. camera became a distraction, not an apparatus that trains patience. the extreme of daguerreotypes and the lingering slowness of finding the right angle, of observing and accentuating the charisma of those being photographed flipped to become the portability & fastness, destructive fidgeting, an irritating itch to catch whatever is fated to be missed. the speed of proliferation of images is toxic, they expire unnoticed & unnoticeably - the creator’s fancy to affect cannot cope with the artificially fostered velocity. the options? effortlessly succumbing into your own bottomless repository stored in the volatile servers in order to pull out what can be representative of the post-capitalist era. or fatiguing yourself with the uninventiveness of the prompts since the domain of AI-generated iconography is still unexciting. does it signify the photography’s eclipse & disintegration and finally the Barthian death of the author - in the newfound terms?
I butchered more than a half of my films and wiped out almost 80% of my digital files - I felt oddly indifferent and stubbornly apathetic to the insignificance of the subject matter. those images I eliminated are still being habitually used in the newsletters, and in social media, the proper credits are dismissed. the act of erasing the imagery equals afflicting the ghastly pain. art meant to be destructive, and the true artist is destined to make the rigorous choices to find her only niche, inaccessible to others.
A SNAPSHOT INTO THE CURRENT STATE OF SOCIETY in 5805 CHARACTERS
disclaimer: when properly applied, Russian can be more aggressive, its metaphors more expansive, and its linguistic tools for sarcasm and cynicism are truly immense. I love an eloquent meat grinder and the heavy artillery of sophisticated provocations.
I love to juicily dissect the system, unashamedly delivering criticism to its face or leaving juicy reviews on Google Maps, receiving bonuses in the form of free massages, cocktails, compensation, and other material equivalents, plus numerous apologies. when you strategically lash out, satisfaction soars.
I like to point out the flaws of concert organisers, the drunken “sharks of the pen” in immigration who rake in hard currency by profiting off big-name musicians through ticket resales, the cirrhosis of the art industry, the numerous narcissistically incompetent showbiz figures, and fledgling DJs on a thermonuclear cocktail of drugs.
I have a pathological dislike for all the degenerates who litter the space with their talentless, trashy content—the tongue-tied “influencers,” over-inflated with Botox, whose lives are determined by the number of likes and refined praise on social media, and based on the inconsistency of dividends from unethical brands.
those who splurge at the London Ritz for afternoon tea one day, and then retouch themselves with cheap makeup the next, stock up on frozen food sales at Aldi, prattle on about healthy living and diets, all the while churning out artless videos about life in Britain and trying to recruit followers to their lifestyle.
I also find the following representatives of my own self-invented demographic classification, based on a fixation with the gimmicks of the late capitalist era, an unfounded delusion of grandeur, and a recurring addiction to devices, intolerable:
- the self-proclaimed futurologists stuck in speculating on utopian themes for years – as a rule, their imaginations are exhausted by the “luxury” quality of their monotonous existence and parasitism on the income of others. they embody the cataclysm of contradiction between theory & practice, clumsily tossing stories of marginalised communities onto the podiums of TED talks and haughtily chewing over the topic of equality, clad in the skin of premium labels, in the name of the sole purpose of self-glorification;
- talentless lifestyle & travel photographers relocated from their familiar environments, whose true occupation and sources of income are secret, yet they are stuck in permanent travels around the world. steady stagnation is evident. they’ve either adapted to the VSCO filter’s application via a template, or they prefer a highly aesthetic “film-like” reflection of reality—no context, no sociological underpinning, just a paltry selection of images accompanied by the forced texts and the interpreted empty talk of Wikipedia facts;
— that incoherent cross-section of society, seething with festering, hopelessly overwhelmed by hormones and mired in numerous identity crises, addicted to psychoanalysis and the frantic provision of sexual services. those who, dependent on subsidies, live on credit, chomping down amphetamines and ketamines with tons of chemical-laden fast food and washing it down with energy drinks;
- those who shelter in depression, melancholy, complain about phantom neuro-features, etc., just to slack off and procrastinate, they suspiciously avoid social withdrawal, are unintelligible & incomprehensible in close contact;
- hysterical coaches, jammed up and masturbating on the topic of ‘shanti-shanti’, dependant on regular cleansing through ayahuasca rituals, and those enlightened souls who, having shelled out a tidy sum for worthless courses, begin selling healing programs;
- healthy lifestyle advocates, hopelessly stuck in dietary restrictions, their faces inseparably chained to the toilet, and those who have retreated into categorical asceticism, munching on lettuce leaves and covering up vitamin deficiencies with big pharma synthetics;
- BDSM enthusiasts shaking their sweaty hairy bellies, vulgarly tied in chains & torn mesh, whose whole body itches painfully with lust;
- a cowardly misogynistic element. such men lustfully ashen themselves from the obscenity of their primitive desires for strong women. they proudly puff up their wealth, MBA degrees, the number of push-ups they can do at a time, and the variety of their travels, yet they keep comments on their posts locked, clinically terrified of criticism.
- all those who comfortably mooch on topical issues remotely, away from the center of events, from a business-class seat, having read too much of the biased and controlled propaganda press, yet suffer from a myopic understanding of political, socio-cultural nuances, and the dark side of marketing.
- those who lurk behind the userpics of charismatic & famous people in the telegram channels, chewing over gossip and spreading vile rumours like homeless mongrels;
- those who use other people’s, possibly original, photos, ignoring copyright, or nauseating fake AI, or a low-quality series of selfies to explain their contradictory, narrow-minded opinions;
- those faceless masses stuck in scrolling and trolling, with an extremely low level of education, especially in political and cultural studies. they are embittered and glued to the television with dull gazes, uttering monosyllabic, repetitive slogans from social media —their rigid minds are inflexible to fresh facts and arguments, and they live through the prism of conservative cliches.
all of the above, in whole or in part, characterises the majority of politicians & public figures, so they do not deserve to be singled out as a separate category.
and all these specimens are united by a dislike for themselves, masked by a false authority, they hide behind tolerance and forbearance, but inside they are sniping with contempt, hatred and envy, they neurotically crave increased attention, their skills for independent existence are at a rudimentary stage, their words and actions are alarmingly inconsistent, erudition is in an irreparable deficit, they sycophantically assent and piggishly imitate those who they are not, they are characterised by collecting and putrid materialism, and emotional degeneration.
meanwhile, I am accumulating a fan base of those who continue to hate me for my unbending honesty & cold-blooded straightforwardness, and my ability to counter with ironclad logic everything that reeks of weakness and falsehood.
