Time Forward! Domestic photography of the 1960s-1980s

The State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSPHOTO together with the N.I. Grodekov Khabarovsk Territorial Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts of Komsomolsk-on-Amur presents the exhibition "Time Forward! Domestic Photography of the 1960s-1980s".

The exhibition consists of 50 original prints from the ROSPHOTO collection and presents Russian photography of the 60-80s of the last century, which is centered on man, his inner and social life, his quests and aspirations, everyday life, leisure and creativity. This exhibition is about a time that has become legendary. It is about our mothers, fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, brothers and sisters and ourselves.

After the severe trials of the first half of the twentieth century, the culture of the Thaw paved the way for new creative discoveries. Coming to painting, theater, cinema, poetry and photography, the generation of young people, longing for creative freedom, determined for a long time the general emotional tone of cultural life - optimistic and ardent, romantic and attentive to human life in its various manifestations.

The exhibition is composed of images taken by famous photojournalists and talented amateur photographers from different regions of the former USSR. Among the authors are Haris Shakhmametyev, Gennady Khudoleyev, Igor Gavrilov, Viktor Ilyin, Lyudmila Ivanova, Oleg Mironets, Boris Mikhalevkin, Valentin Golubovsky, Mikhail Razinkin, Boris Smelov, Boris Konov, Evgeny Khaldey, Boris Ignatovich, Viktor Butra, Gennady Terskikh, Evgeny Pokuts.

Yevgeny Khaldey, a classic of Soviet photo reportage, traveled from Murmansk to Berlin during the Great Patriotic War. He filmed the signing of the German surrender act, the hoisting of the flag over the Reichstag, the heads of the Allied powers at the Potsdam Conference. In the 1960s and 1970s he worked for Pravda, the central newspaper of the Soviet Union. Among his heroes are artists, writers, cinematographers, captured both in work and in moments of relaxation.

In the late 1920s, Boris Ignatovich, together with Alexander Rodchenko, headed the photo section of the avant-garde association "October". In the pre-war period, his photographs shaped perceptions of progressive development and social improvements in the young Soviet country. In 1941-1945 Ignatovich was a correspondent, shooting events at the front for the newspaper "Boevoye Znamya". In the post-war decades, the master became one of the figures of the photo club movement. The value of the legacy of this active innovator, who made a significant contribution to the development of national photography, is extremely high.

The life of many authors of the exhibition is connected with photo clubs.

Boris Mikhalevkin's creative and life experience is unique. Having survived the death of his relatives in besieged Leningrad as a teenager, the future photographer met the end of the war in Poland together with an evacuee where he managed to get a job. In the peaceful decades he worked as an electrician and became a passionate amateur photographer. In 1980 he began to attend meetings of the Leningrad club "Zerkalo". Interest in people, ability to see a positive story in the surrounding everyday life always distinguish Mikhalevkin's pictures.

Ludmila Ivanova, whose visual language was influenced by Mikhalevkin's work, was formed at club meetings of the legendary "Mirror". Since the mid-1980s, she has been exploring the world of Orthodox culture through photography. Now Ivanova is the author of many exhibitions and albums, a photo chronicler of the revival of faith in modern Russia after years of scientific atheism's domination.

Starting out as amateurs, Boris Konov, Haris Shakhmametyev and Evgeny Pokuts had become strong masters working in various genres of black-and-white photography by the 1980s. For a long time they have remained faithful to their themes and to their special photographic vitality, their interest in Leningrad and Leningraders.

Boris Smelov, the author, formed under the influence of the figures of the unofficial culture of the Northern Capital, who remains in the history of black-and-white photography a self-sufficient and original artist, stands out among the photographers of his generation with his poetic vision, special sensitivity to the atmosphere of Leningrad - St. Petersburg and its suburbs.

Valentin Golubovsky has worked for many years as a photo correspondent for the newspaper Vecherniy Leningrad since the late 1960s. He collaborated with the all-Union magazines "Soviet Circus", "Musical Life", "Theater", "Soviet Variety". Golubovsky is a master of documentary portraits of figures of science, art and public life.

Igor Gavrilov, who traveled to many regions of the USSR on assignment for Ogonyok magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, is the author of successful photographs that have won domestic and foreign awards. Gavrilov's acutely social photo-reports about the life of the changing country in the second half of the 1980s, among them photos of the Chernobyl accident liquidation, became famous. Despite some pathos, his work is distinguished by the originality of the subject and the ability to capture the moment as a sensory experience that is transmitted to the viewer.

Viktor Ilyin, an amateur photographer from Chelyabinsk who has been living in the Leningrad region for the last few years, has been practicing photography for over 40 years. His most characteristic genres are landscape, portrait and experiment. The photographer considers philosophical approach and the search for the extraordinary in the ordinary to be the most important in his work.

The exhibition's kaleidoscopic variety of subjects is united by the intensity of emotions on the faces of the heroes of the photographs. The people in the photos work, create, rest, travel, play adult and children's games, and get into funny situations. And whatever they do, they always retain their humanity and share their joys, sorrows, successes and achievements with the photographer without fear.

ROSPHOTO State Museum and Exhibition Center, founded in 2002 Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, carries out activities in all areas related to photography: stores, restores and publicly presents museum objects in the field of national and world photography in its own exhibition halls in St. Petersburg, as well as in other regions of Russia and abroad.