Vyacheslav Baranov. Light Breath.

7 October - 8 November 2011
ROSPHOTO Yard Building exhibition hall
35 Bolshaya Morskaya str., St.Petersburg

The exhibition of St.-Petersburg photographer Vyacheslav Baranov at ROSPHOTO is to open on 6 October 2011 at 18.00. The Light Breath project is comprised of the works from three series: The Last Romans (2002-2004), Shagreen Time (2011) and St.-Petersburg at Twilight (2000-2010).

Vyacheslav Baranov about Light Breath:
"It is the rhythm of my breath that I, being a photographer, a "man with a camera", try to control my actions and their results. When breathing is especially light and the air feels heady, fills you with joy, like the air in the mountains with a spectacular view on even higher mountains, then you are not mistaken. For a moment you become a magician, you are able to enliven a knowingly dead object, like, say, a drain cover built into asphalt, capture its tricky grin, look into the empty eye pits not only of the Bronze Horseman but his horse as well - everything is possible as long as the air in your lungs keeps carrying their owner above the silent world... Even old films, picked from the litter, become treasures, speaking, singing, making a dramatic narration, a fantastic story. Still, the time comes and you are losing your breath, laboring for it. This means you have to look for new mountains to climb, new cliffs. It would be good if you find it... Photography is pitiless. By leveling out the living and the lifeless by its stillness, it brings out to consumer market (in Marxist terminology) the new product, the possibility of conscious life. It seems to me that even the civilization itself, led by the instinct of self-preservation and lost in the debris of sign systems, has been trying to return mechanic function to image. However, billions of photographers are unconsciously dominated by the idea of the value of the product that is actually given out for free, that lets discover the world's end around the nearest corner. Motionless amalgam breaks the line of extrinsic events, allowing no false variants. And what's more, it returns you back to yourself, inviting to take time and think of the next image...
I would like to offer to your attention something that I managed to capture, to preserve not just formally by the character of my profession, but reflecting the inner history, as it seemed to me, the life of waking images with their tragic, irony, sarcasm, God knows what else..."


Biography

Vyacheslav Baranov is the member of the Russian Artists Union, International Council of Museums (ICOM) and International Federation of Artists (IFA).

Selected group exhibitions:
2000 - International Photo Salon Siberia, Novosibirsk
Shanghai International Art Forum 2000, People's Republic of China
2001 - Shanghai International Art Forum 2001, People's Republic of China
Fodar Photo Biennial, Pleven, Berlin
I International Photography Festival Prozreniye, Contemporary Art Center, Nizhniy Novgorod
2002 - International Photo Salon Siberia, Novosibirsk
International Moscow Photo Biennial, International House of Photography, Moscow
2004 - Paris Photo, Paris
Poem Without Character, Anna Akhmatova Museum in Fontanny Dom, St.-Petersburg
2008 - International Moscow Photo Biennial, International House of Photography, Moscow



Selected personal exhibitions:
2002 - Svetloyar. Keepers of the Relic. State Museum of Alexey Gorkiy,Nizhniy Novgorod
Dream of May, St.-Petersburg Artists Union (IFA) Exhibition Hall,St.-Petersburg
Black and White, FotoSoyuz gallery, Moscow
Another Life, St.-Petersburg Artists Union (IFA) Exhibition Hall,St.-Petersburg
2004 - Closet, St.-Petersburg Artists Union (IFA) Exhibition Hall, St.-Petersburg
Spring, Grand Palais, Paris
2005 - The Seasons, Pushkinskaya 10 Art Center, St.-Petersburg
2006 - The Last Romans, St.-Petersburg Artists Union (IFA) Exhibition Hall, St.-Petersburg
2008 - The Humble Alms of Hollywood. Seventh Sense, O.G.I.Street club, Moscow