SPECIAL EDITION: A PHOTOBOOK IN RUSSIA

7 April — 15 May 2016

House Museum of Photography, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Curators: Anastasia Bogomolova & Marina Sokolovskaya

The exhibition «Special Edition» became the first museum exhibition in Russia devoted to the phenomenon of photobooks in the former Soviet space. This project was conceived as the study of structure and narrative in the books of contemporary authors and as the research of the ways to show these works to the viewers.

The exhibition consists of three blocks. The first is historical. It shows the context of the formation of the genre in the country since the 1930s. This part of the exhibition includes propagandist publications under the editorship of El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Solomon Telingater and other artists, who used not only expressive of individual images and collages but also attractive methods of book design, typography and film editing.

Two other blocks of the exhibition include 54 works of contemporary photographers from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Russia, and their colleagues from other countries associated with the post-Soviet photographic life in the general context. Among the selected works there are photobooks from short-lists of international festivals and book awards, dummies and photozines. 14 photobooks are represented by installations, video, audio and objects. For example, «DOM» and «Address» by Julia Borissova, «Shvilishvili» by Jana Romanova, «Iceberg» by Kirill Savchenkov, «25 weeks of winter» by Ekaterina Anokhina, «After a while» by Natalia Baluta, «Secrets» by Natalia Reznik, «Welcome to LTP» by Irina Popova and etc. Other works are available in more traditional library format.