The exhibition of Alexander Kitaev at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography has become a real event in the cultural life of the capital. Kitaev is one of the leading photographers of St. Petersburg, organizer and curator of numerous projects, and, more recently, a photography historian. In the history of photographic impressions of St. Petersburg from the time of Ivan Bianchi to the present day, he undoubtedly takes his place by creating a unique image of the CITY. Kitaev's main and favorite theme - Petersburg - is presented on such a large scale for the first time. The exposition includes 130 original works of authorship, created over a quarter of a century.
Alexander Kitaev from interviews of different years:
“There is such a concept -“ multi-tool ”, that is, a person who owns several working specialties. In photography, I am such a "multi-site".
“My professional credo is developed by many years of experience:“ Never do what is in demand today ”. Work on the topic of the day is perceived by me as an order, as violence against free creativity, which should respond only to the inner movements of the soul. "
“At one fine moment I realized that photography has absorbed everything else in me, that in addition to red and white blood particles, my blood also includes light-sensitive silver halides and without their constant sensation I am not viable, that photography has become my way of life. a way of perception and communication. It happened around 1987. "
"The camera should become an extension of the hand and free the head for complete immersion in the creation of the image."
“… St. Petersburg is timeless for me, and I try to convey the unchanging spiritual core of this city as a Person. She is contradictory, this Person. "
“The portrait will never disappear, because every person on this planet is primarily interested in himself, himself in the proposed or assumed circumstances. Another thing is that the portrait is not suitable for the refined intellectual and formal postmodern games prevailing in today's art. It is now important for many artists to shout "I !!!" as loudly as possible. And he doesn't even care if there is an echo. And in a portrait, the artist is always in second place, in the first place is the character. And the portrait is addressed to at least tomorrow. And the portrait presupposes at least the possession of a craft, a school. And for contemporary art, all this is not "relevant". That is why many artists are not engaged in portraiture today. I'm in the rearguard. For me, "relevance" in relation to art is a swear word. "
Alexander Kitaev Photo by Stanislav Chabutkin.
- Alexander, in recent years you have sharply reduced your exhibition activity, your personal exhibitions have become rare, like a holiday. What has this exhibition become for you?
- Indeed, there was a time when I did several solo exhibitions every year, not to mention participation in dozens of group exhibitions. I shot a lot, typed a lot, and I wanted people to see the fruits of my labor. Now I am more and more involved in the history of photography and teaching. There is less and less time for organizing your own exhibitions. But if I am offered to make an exhibition and the conditions seem acceptable to me, I agree. The current exhibition is composed of several series and series of photographs created in the past. Each of these series was to some extent a stage in my life, but together they were never exhibited. It is unlikely that the exhibition can be designated as a result, but rather a retrospective.
- You are undoubtedly one of the most famous Russian photographers. Is such popularity pleasant, and how does one live with it?
“The term famous is hardly applicable to a photographer. The one behind the lens is rarely more famous than those in front of the lens. Perhaps this is the specifics of the profession. How can you not remember the architects? Their works of art are constantly before our eyes, we all admire and admire them, but few remember the faces, like the names of the creators. So it is with photographers: they illuminate and sanctify the world around them, but they themselves almost always remain in the shadows. So we can only talk about a very limited popularity, that is, about being known in a certain circle of people who, by the nature of their professional activities, are in one way or another connected with the "consumption" of photography.
The fact that I, as you put it, "famous" (in a certain circle), in my opinion, has two completely objective reasons. I have been doing photography for a very long time, and during this time there has been a natural change of generations. And in any community or profession, there should always be some reputable elder. Currently, it turned out to be me. So it's not about any of my special talents, it's just that I retained the original creative impulse and the feeling of myself, the author, as a tiny link in an endless photographic relay race. Well, another aspect is also related to time. Since about the beginning of the XXI century, with the advent of new photographic technologies, millions of people around the world have taken up photography. Many of them want to improve in their hobby and are looking at who to learn from, who to be guided by. Many people like my photos - from here, according to the law of large numbers, and my fame.
Well, as for "pleasantness" and "how you live", here, like any medal, there are two sides. Since I'm in plain sight, I have to look at a lot of photos, most often bad ones. And not just look, but talk about them, explain something, because they come to me for advice, for help, for an assessment. It tires and dulls the eye. At the same time, my popularity allows me to solve many issues with less effort and energy. Whether it's bidding with buyers or negotiating with officials to organize exhibitions.
- How to educate an artist in yourself?
- Much depends on the starting conditions: family, social circle, place of birth, etc. I was born, as they say, in a “simple” family. My parents are peasant children. His father became a car mechanic, and his mother became a nurse. So the social circle among relatives had little inclination to engage in creativity. But they taught me to be industrious. In my youth, in addition to photography, I mastered many crafts. To work stupidly, mechanically, I have always been uninteresting, and in every craft I invented something, showed a creative approach. When photography began to come out on top in my life, I realized that without changing my social circle (and I worked as a locksmith at a factory), I could not master art, not craft, on my own. Then, in the early 1970s, I joined one of the best photo clubs in the country in those years - the club of the Vyborg Palace of Culture (VDK). This was the first step. Later, already working as a photographer-artisan at a factory, I worked a lot and persistently in humanitarian self-education. One more step: in 1987 I became a member of the Mirror Photo Club, where a creative atmosphere was in full swing. Well, then I was lucky: I met and became friends with a wonderful artist and polymath Pavel Potekhin. It was he who completed my art education.
I am convinced that the title of the Artist cannot be a self-name. At all times and in all generations of photographers, there have been such masters whose works fell out of the general range. In order to somehow be noted, to distinguish them from the general mass, contemporaries called them artists. I have already told somewhere that when my exhibitions began and I heard from visitors in my direction: here, here he is - an artist, I nervously looked around and looked with my eyes: who is this about? It turned out about me. It was very strange. Now this title is pretty compromised. Numerous universities and other educational institutions train artists at the same time as engineers and high school teachers. And many who take a camera in their hands immediately order a business card for themselves, where it is written that its owner is a photographer-artist. Somehow I don't want to join these ranks. I have a feeling that things have become different these days. There is no more sense in the concept of "photographer-artist" than in the phrase "tram passenger".
- To shoot Petersburg so piercingly, you need to know and feel it well. How was your vision of the City formed?
- How was it formed? I’ll try to tell you, just don’t think that it was some kind of conscious and youthful task. Everything happened somehow by itself. I have always read a lot, and great poets and writers have written many works about St. Petersburg that are included in the treasury of world literature. When I met my gaze with this or that Petersburg subject - a square, a street, a building, etc., I already knew something from literature about them. But I always wanted to know more - the biography of the subject that interested me: who were the parents, when was it born, what time was it? To satisfy this curiosity, one had to study the history of Petersburg, and because of this history in general; the history of Petersburg architecture and architecture in general; biographies of creators and famous residents, and hence the geography. Separately - the iconography of St. Petersburg, and hence the history of the fine arts. Yes, there is a whole complex, you can't list everything. For me, one thing is certain: the City has shaped me and my vision. Perhaps he chose for something. And I owe him. I don’t know how it happened, but, unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I don’t go to the barricades in the fight against this or that innovation in St. Petersburg. I know that the "genius of the place" will cope with everything that he dislikes, and God will control the rest. It seems to me that I have lived in this city for more than three hundred years and I know that no tactical intervention can change its strategy. It is he, the City, who owns us, not we!
When capturing my city, I did not think about selling my images and almost never shot it to order. I myself have always been the customer. And he earned his living and creativity with a different, applied photography. I think it left an imprint on my pictures.
- Can you name the photos from which the artist Alexander Kitaev really began?
- You know that I work in different genres? So, I remember the picture very well, after which I said to myself: now you can shoot Petersburg. That is, I realized that I managed to embody the feeling of Petersburg that lived in me in a sheet with an image. It happened around 1982, after more than ten years of photography. Then I felt in myself - and those around me had not yet seen - that what was beginning to be born was what later critics began to call "Kitaevsky Petersburg". In other genres, it was about the same. Except that when I took up the photogram (around 1989), I immediately began to do something that was significantly different from what was done in this genre by my predecessors.
Once Joseph Brodsky explained to students that the work of a poet is always work in development, selection, and that the poet is in some way Hercules. His exploits are his poems. It is impossible to understand what Hercules is, one at a time, two or three. Hercules is all twelve. This is the same in photography: it is impossible to calculate either the beginning of the path or the scale of the photographer from one shot. And it's not Hercules' business - to call your actions feats ...
- Is your impeccable mastery of the composition an innate feeling or the result of work and many years of experience?
- Neither one nor the other. Here I agree with Thomas Mann: "the skill for which you feel an inner need is acquired rather quickly."
To photograph is to bombard an emulsion (or matrix) with photons. This bombing is not always aimed. But you have to do it at least heap. In order not to get into milk, you have to acquire the skill of owning the composition. Perhaps, this skill is given to Petersburgers faster and easier. Inhabitants of the Neva delta are surrounded by an amazingly harmonious space created by first-class architects; St. Petersburg museums are filled with masterpieces of fine art that provide examples of impeccable composition. All this from childhood, willy-nilly, educates the eye. All that remains is to take advantage of the fruits of this upbringing and fill your hand.
I must note that the so-called laws of composition are not something once and for all discovered, studied and recommended for the indispensable application that guarantees success. The human eye is becoming more and more armed, and the classical terms of the laws of composition were formulated at the time of the infancy of the visual arts, at the time of their rather simple toolbox. "Tonal and linear perspective", "rhythm", "plot-compositional center", "diversity", etc. - no one canceled this. However, a modern artist uses an ultra-wide-angle or ultra-long-focus lens, shoots on infrared film or looks into the invisible with the help of X-rays, etc. All this breaks the usual ideas about space and subject, prompting to treat the rules of composition creatively, to adapt them to modern human vision. In my opinion, the laws of composition always arise from the fact of a completed work. An artist, not having read a textbook, but listening to something from above, creates a perfect work. The theorist comes, decomposes the image into its components, weighs, probes, measures them and puts everything on the shelves. Then he writes recipes for obtaining masterpieces.
- Constant striving for perfection - is it striving for something impossible and unattainable?
- Well no! Just the desire to achieve the maximum possible. A certain tuning fork sounds in me, listening to which I understand whether I have reached or not. Here, as in any art, there are two aspects: technique and art itself.
In terms of technology, this is the case. You know I still work in silver technology, right? And it, unlike digital, digital, does not allow you to take a step back. The entire silver photographic process, with its obligatory multi-stage and non-instantaneous image processing cycle, sets a certain rhythm of life. The silver 35-mm film "sprout" is only sixty-five meters. But every time you deal with her, you kneel down in front of her. It must be correctly exposed, and you cannot “cleanse” the shot film and expose it again. You cannot develop and not fix, fix and not rinse, rinse and not dry, etc. This is disciplining. This obliges, forces us to move only forward, towards the ideal, perfect negative - after all, at the second stage, we have to create an equally perfect imprint-positive. And here, too, there are a lot of subtleties, responsibilities and pitfalls. Here's one example. Working with natural paper always requires two hands. Every graphic artist knows this. It was graphics that always felt, and I was taught to feel, paper, its texture and density, its behavior in the longitudinal and transverse directions. Always appreciated the tactile communication with her. And how the careless handling of the work on paper insulted them, and then me! A certain buyer will come and take the sheet with one hand - everything, the hall is guaranteed! I'm not talking about fingerprints ... You immediately see: in front of you is an amateur with a pocket full of circulation papers.
This is one side of the issue. Another is that a photographer who wants to be creative constantly has to squeeze a laboratory assistant out of himself, drop by drop. Oh, how many of my colleagues believe that the perfect print is a piece of photographic art, completely forgetting that a piece is not so much a product as a message. The technology of image production today is so good that we are totally surrounded by technically competent photographic images. However, if they depict, reflect something, then for the most part - a rather primitive inner world of the creator. And they do not give anything to the soul or heart of the sophisticated spectator. Here I will again allow myself to quote Brodsky: “One of the main problems facing a poet today, whether modern or not modern, is that the poetry that preceded him — in other words, the legacy — was so vast that doubts simply arise. whether you can add something to it, modify your predecessors, or remain yourself. ... To think that you are able to say something qualitatively new after people like Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Oden, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Frost, Eliot ... means to be a very self-confident or very ignorant type. I would rank myself in the latter category. When you first start writing, you know little about what came before you. Only in the middle of life do you acquire this knowledge, and it bends to the ground or hypnotizes. "
- Do you trust only yourself when evaluating your own works?
- In recent years I try to listen only to myself. I've already talked about the internal tuning fork. There are few hits with me in unison, but I don't want to dance to someone else's tune. I don't even know what else to add here.
But you don't always need to obey only yourself. I'll tell you the following story. When I was a photographer at a shipyard, I was annoyed by production assignments that forced me to make copies of applied photography on precious silver photographic papers. It seemed to me that I could use each such sheet with greater benefit: to print on it some kind of work of art, or even "imperishable". It was especially annoying when these were circulations of electrical circuits of this or that device of an underwater or surface ship. After all, there were already both photocopying equipment and a copier - faster and cheaper. But no! The sailors' demands were immutable: only silver prints! I began to understand, and it turned out that in an aggressive environment only the good old silver technology preserves the image and thereby helps the crew in distress to escape. When it comes to the survival of people in extreme situations, how can you argue? What are my artistic ambitions compared to people's lives?
- How did you develop relations with colleagues, was there a desire to get their recognition?
- At different stages in different ways. Once upon a time, if you do not bend your soul, then, of course, it was important to get the recognition of colleagues. And that's why. Historians of the Soviet era wrote about the photographers of pre-revolutionary Russia, for example, as follows: "Dmitriev's work developed in the difficult conditions of tsarist times." Now it is often said that this and that grew up in unbearable conditions of a "scoop." For photographers, the "severity of conditions" was aggravated by the absolute non-recognition of photography among the arts by Soviet institutions. But we, the photographers, thought differently! In addition, we worked in an information vacuum and knew and saw very little from the work of our foreign colleagues, both predecessors and contemporaries. Therefore, we had to learn for the most part from each other. There were no other specialists! This is the peculiarity of the Russian photographic community. I remember how after Perestroika a stream of gallery owners, curators, art critics poured into our country from the West, who tried to find out from their Russian colleagues something about our modern photography. Those were dumbfounded: “What? The photo? Are there such artists? " That is, photography, like sex, could not exist in the Soviet country ...
Then came other times and other relationships. Somehow imperceptibly, the recognition of my colleagues came to me. I know from my own experience how difficult it is to maintain the purity of perception and appreciation of the work of old friends and acquaintances. I want distance. Then at least a little like perception in absolute value.
The cult Petersburg photographer, curator, historian of Russian photography, Alexander Kitaev, has presented three new albums.
Walking along the Marlinskaya Alley
The album of the famous Petersburg photographer, curator, historian of photography Alexander Kitaev presents photographic images of Peterhof parks, created in 1993-1995. The book is addressed to a wide range of readers interested in the art of photography and the culture of St. Petersburg.
Alexander Kitaev - author and participant of prestigious exhibitions of contemporary photography held in many countries of the world. Author of many publications and lectures on the history and theory of photography, as well as books: "Subjective" (2000); “Subjectively about photographers. Letters "(2013); “St. Petersburg by Ivan Bianchi. Poste restante "(2015).
Photos of the Peterhof cycle were included in the collections of state and private collections in Russia and foreign countries, were published in a number of albums and books on contemporary art, and were also exhibited at personal exhibitions.
http://rostokbooks.ru/shop; [email protected]; Tel. +7 921 9063507
Athos vintage
“I was an Orthodox Christian and a Russian artist on Athos. And only ... ”- Alexander Kitaev repeats after the romantic writer Boris Zaitsev. Zaitsev, the largest representative of the "Silver Age" of Russian literature, visited the millennial monastic state on Mount Athos in Greece in 1927. Kitaev, a recognized classic of silver photography, having conceived to create a true "portrait" of his contemporary Athos, made five expeditionary trips to the Holy Mountain in the second half of the 1990s. This edition reproduces only a small fraction of Kitaev's Athonite impressions, vividly demonstrating the author's ability to comprehend the mystery of the bizarre symbiosis of nature and man, coexisting on equal terms in one of the most holy places of the Orthodox world.
The album is of interest not only for lovers of photography, but also serves as a unique source for fans and researchers of the history of the Orthodox faith.
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Patina. Old Summer Garden
The album presents exquisite photographic impressions of the Summer Garden, created by the master at the turn of the 1980s-1990s. The highest culture of the image, characteristic of one of the most famous representatives of the classical direction of the St. Petersburg school of art photography, made it possible to create the image of an old park ensemble, glorified by brilliant Russian poets over the past three centuries.
“Probably, we have said goodbye to the old Summer Garden forever. The summer garden of our childhood, in which the pale images of ancient gods and nymphs seemed like good ghosts, lurking in the thick of wild greenery or in the wet gold of autumn foliage. Good ghosts have left us, but the idyllic notes of memory will remain in the poetic lines and in the silver patina of photography, ”writes D. Severyukhin.
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By releasing albums of the Classic series that are optimal in terms of volume, quality and price, the publishers aim to acquaint a huge army of amateur photographers with works that have become classics of Russian photography.
You can buy Aleksandr Kitaev's albums on the shelves of the book departments of ROSPHOTO, the Borey gallery, ART-BOOK in the Academy of Arts, the Library of the Academy of Sciences and in the bookstores of St. Petersburg, in the Moscow House of Photography (Moscow, Ostozhenka, 16).
Alexander Alexandrovich Kitaev - Soviet and later Russian master of photography, historian, artist. Author of 4 books and many publications on the art of photography. His photographic portraits are the standard of the genre, and the most famous cycles are the works dedicated to the Athos Monastery, St. Petersburg and the Netherlands.
Enthusiasm
Alexander Kitaev was born in Leningrad on November 23, 1952. Not much time passed after the war and the terrible blockade, and the boy witnessed, in fact, the second birth of the city. Already during this period, a love for Leningrad-Petersburg was born, which the artist carried through his whole life. I wanted to express my feelings precisely with the help of photography - a tool that allows you to “stop a moment of time”.
This opportunity appeared in the early 1970s. After leaving school, a guy from a simple family got a job as a locksmith at the famous electromechanical plant "Zarya", where, by the way, he worked for 8 years (1970-1978), from ring to bell. In parallel, in 1971, he entered the correspondence department of the North-West Polytechnic Institute.
Within the walls of the educational institution, he met the guys from the photo club of the Vyborg Palace of Culture (VDK). It was not just a hobby group, but the oldest community of photographers in the country, where outstanding masters of their craft shared their experience with young people. Alexander could not miss the opportunity to improve his skills, and in 1972 he joined the ranks of the photo club.
Vocation
A wonderful team of A. Kitaev, S. Chabutkin, E. Skibitskaya, B. Konov, E. Pokuts has crystallized within the community of amateur photographers at the VDK. The guys and girls formed the creative group "Window" and worked fruitfully together for several years. They have become laureates of various contests of folk art, city, all-Union and even international exhibitions more than once.
Alexander Kitaev did not want to stop there. His mind demanded a lot of knowledge. He entered the university of worker correspondents, which operated at the Leningrad House of Journalists, at the faculty of photojournalists. After graduating from it in 1977, Alexander Alexandrovich was able to engage in photography professionally. He easily got a job as a full-time photographer at the famous shipbuilding regime "Admiralty Shipyards", where, among other things, they built warships.
Search
As they accumulate experience, every master wants to share it with his students so that his research is not wasted. Alexander Kitaev was no exception. In 1879 he took an active part in the creation of a new photo club at the House of Friendship of Peoples. It was named so - the Druzhba photo club. For three years, the master shared his professional secrets with youth and colleagues. But in 1982, for unknown reasons, he left the organization, taking up independent creativity.
In subsequent years, he worked a lot, experimented, looked for himself in other areas of the arts. But close live communication with colleagues was clearly not enough. In 1987, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich joined the ranks of the Zerkalo photo club; in 1988, he was a member of the Leningrad association “Photocentre” at the Palace of Culture im. "Ilyich", in 1989 he was a member of the Association "Community of Photo Artists", created by R. Mangutov. These years have passed in painstaking work, searching for new subjects on the wave of perestroika and glasnost, in fact - searching for oneself as an author.
Creation
Back in the 1980s, Alexander Kitaev began to create one of the most famous photo cycles of Leningrad, which later became canonical. As one of the critics noted, Kitaev's works are beyond time and space. The photographer so subtly captured the moment of filming that it is impossible to say to which period the photography belongs: is it modern Petersburg, Soviet Leningrad, or Tsarist Petrograd?
Another landmark work of that period was the creation of series of photographic portraits of the most famous figures of Leningrad culture. Later, in the new Russia, the project continued. Thanks to this series, Alexander Alexandrovich became known as one of the best portrait photographers in the country.
Since the 1990s, the master has been experimenting in a new technique of chemography and photogram, the field of abstract photography. Kitaev's creativity was highly appreciated. In 1992 he was admitted to the Union of Russian Photographers, and 2 years later - to the Union of Russian Artists. Since 1998, Alexander Alexandrovich's photo galleries have been exhibited at the "Traditional Autumn Photo Marathon".
New stage
Period 1996 to 2000 marked the creation of the series "Window to the Netherlands". The work was carried out in close collaboration with colleagues from the Dutch publication Wubbo de Jang. The project turned out to be extremely successful and received flattering reviews from professionals. The works draw parallels between two port cities, equally rightly called the "Venice of the North".
In the 2000s, Kitaev moved to a new creative level. He becomes the organizer of the Art-Tema publishing house, whose goal is to publish literature on photographic skill. In the mid-2000s, he began to write books on photography. These are not just how-to guides, but a look at photography as an art object. The author is actively exploring the Internet. At one time he was the editor of the online magazine Peter-club.
One cannot ignore the unique cycle of photographs from the Athos series. The author went on expeditions to the holy mountain five times and created an amazing chronicle of the life of one of the most closed monasteries in the world.
Editions
- Photographer about photography (2006).
- Stereoscope. Subjectively about photographers (2013).
- Poste restante. St. Petersburg Ivan Bianchi (2015).
- Petersburg light in photographs by Karl Doutendey (2016).
Since 2012 Kitaev has been engaged in educational activities. Teaches photography in various photography centers, schools, educational institutions. The master's experience is highly demanded.
Alexander Kitaev 1952 was born in Leningrad. He worked as a photographer at a shipyard (1978-1999). He received his primary photographic education at the VDK photo club and at the courses for photojournalists of the House of Journalists. Since 1975, he has been actively involved in creative exhibitions - the author of 35 personal exhibitions and a participant in more than 70 group exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Member of the Union of Photo Artists of Russia (1992). Member of the "Photopostscriptum" association (1993). Member of the Union of Artists of Russia (1994). The works are in Russian and foreign state and private collections. He currently works as a free-lance photographer.
PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS
1988
"City without kumach". shop-salon "Nevsky, 91", Leningrad
1991 "Playing with space". Design firm "Sosnovo", Leningrad.
1994
"A POSTERIORI". "PS-Place", St. Petersburg. (K)
"Constants". Exhibition Hall of the Moskovsky District, Saint Petersburg (catalog)
"The Tricks of Vertumnus". Studio "Stool", St. Petersburg
1995 "White interior". "Golden Garden". Publishing house "LIMBUS-PRESS", St. Petersburg
1996 "PHOTOSYNKYRIA 96". 9th International Meeting. Thessaloniki, Greece
"Petersburg Album". Gallery "Old Village", St. Petersburg
"Look from the inside" (FOTOFAIR'96). Central Exhibition Hall "Manezh", St. Petersburg
"Petersburg through the eyes of Vubbo de Young, Amsterdam through the eyes of Alexander Kitaev." Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam; Central Exhibition Hall "Manezh", St. Petersburg.
"Images of the Holy Mountain". KODAK Pro-Center, St. Petersburg.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1988 "... a city familiar to tears." Exhibition-action of the Association "Community of Photo Artists", Leningrad - Moscow.
1989
"The weapon of laughter." All-Union photo exhibition, Armavir (k)
IV Biennale of Analytical Photography. Yoshkar Ola, Cheboksary (k)
1993 "Annual Exhibition of the Union of Photo Artists of Russia". Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Photopostscriptum". Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (k)
1994-96 “Self-identification. Aspects of St. Petersburg Art of the 1970s - 1990s ”. Kiel, Berlin, Oslo, Sopot, St. Petersburg
1995 "The latest photographic art from Russia." Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Hanover, Gerten, Germany.
1997 "Petersburg '96", Central Exhibition Hall "Manezh", St. Petersburg
"Northern Dream" (CD-ROM Photo-show) as part of the Salute, Petersburg festival, World Financial Center, New York, USA
"Window to the Netherlands", Exhibition Center of the Union of Artists, St. Petersburg; Lili Zakirova Gallery, Hesden; Exhibition Hall De Waag, Lesden; Groningen Conservatory, Groningen;
“Photo Relay: From Rodchenko to the Present Day”, Municipal Gallery “A-3”, Moscow;
"100 photographs of St. Petersburg", Library named after V.V. Mayakovsky, St. Petersburg; Russian Cultural Center, Prague;
"Projectus. Thrown Forward ”, Exhibition Center of the Union of Artists, St. Petersburg (catalog);
“New Photography from Russia”, Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, D.C., US;
"Exhibition of works of the national photo studio" VDK ", Vyborg Palace of Culture, St. Petersburg;
"Shift. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg ", F. M. Dostoevsky Museum, St. Petersburg;
Tower of Babel, Art Collegia Gallery, St. Petersburg;
"Container INCOGNITA", F. M. Dostoevsky Museum, St. Petersburg
COLLECTION
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg
Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow
The Gary Ranson Center for Humanitarian Researches, Austin, TX, USA
The Navigator Foundation, Boston, USA
Mendl Kaszier Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Collection of the restaurant "Vienna", St. Petersburg
Collection of the Free Culture Foundation, St. Petersburg
Collection of the publishing house "LIMBUS-PRESS", St. Petersburg
Bank Imperial, St. Petersburg
Paul Zimmer, Stuttgart, Germany
Herbrand, Cologne, Germany
and other private collections in Germany, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, the USA and Russia.
Source http://www.photographer.ru/resources/names/photographers/26.htm
About the book by Alexander Kitaev "St. Petersburg light in the photographs of Karl Doutendey"
Dmitry Severyukhin
Alexander Kitaev
Petersburg light in the photographs of Karl Doutendey
SPb, "Rostok", 2016 - 204 p. (PHOTOROSSIKA series)
ISBN 978-5-94668-188-9
For purchase and distribution, please contact:
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[email protected];
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The book of the famous St. Petersburg photographer, curator, historian of photography Alexander Kitaev tells about the different stages of the life and work of the outstanding pioneer of photography Karl Dautendei, who created the first reliable photographic images of representatives of the upper strata of Russian society.
The book is addressed to a wide range of readers interested in the history of photography and the culture of St. Petersburg.
The name of the pioneer of photography, Karl Doutendey, is little known not only to the general public, but also to specialists, meanwhile, 19 years of Doutendey's life and work have passed in the capital of the Russian Empire, and he stood at the very origins of Russian photography. Without going into the enumeration of the reasons for the current state of affairs, we note only one - throughout almost the entire XX century, the state structure of Russia, to put it mildly, did not contribute to the study of pre-revolutionary culture, and, as a result, a huge layer of documents and materials on the history of Russian photography was poorly mastered and described. Until now, almost the only source of knowledge about the life and work of the photographer was the autobiography of his son, the famous German artist and poet Max Dautendey, never published in Russian. And now, on 204 pages of the book by Alexander Kitaev, a famous Russian photographer and historian of photography, we read for the first time a detailed and verified biography of a light painter, confirmed by documents. In addition, it reproduced more than 170 excellent rare photographic treasures provided by domestic and foreign state collections, as well as private collectors in Russia and Germany. Here, the author has published dozens of documents related to the early era of Russian photography. 
Full of ups and downs, the life of Karl Doutendey is exciting. He was born in tiny Saxon Aschersleben. In 1839, the year photography was born, he lost his father and learned to be an optician-mechanic. In 1841 he bought a camera obscura in Leipzig and, having independently mastered daguerreotype, entered the path of a professional portrait painter full of commercial risks and competition. In 1843, the newly converted artist made daguerreotype portraits of Duke Leopold of Dessaussky and his family. In the same year, having secured a letter to the Russian empress, the 24-year-old Saxon arrived in St. Petersburg. Soon he became one of the best daguerreotype painters in the capital, and in 1847, before most of his colleagues, he did away with daguerreotype and switched to a promising photographic technology according to the Talbot method. Making portraits of representatives of the upper strata of Russian society, by the beginning of the 1850s. master-innovator took a leading place in the St. Petersburg photographic world. In the mid-1850s, after the invention of collodion technology and a total procession of the so-called. "Visiting cards", he once again on the spot - was the first in Russia to introduce photolithography, to photograph the best representatives of Russian culture and to distribute their portraits through magazines and art salons. In St. Petersburg, Dowtenday was married twice. The first wife, giving birth to four daughters, committed suicide. The second wife from St. Petersburg gave birth to his son here. In 1862, family and business circumstances developed in such a way that the photographer was forced to leave Russia and settle in Bavaria, in Würzburg, where new ups and downs awaited him. Here, having started a business from scratch, calling himself a "photographer from St. Petersburg", he again became a leading portrait painter and a wealthy person. During the German period of his life, his second wife died of an incurable disease, giving birth to another son, his first-born committed suicide, and the youngest son, flatly refusing to continue his father's work, became, as already mentioned, a poet and artist. 
Kitaev's book "St. Petersburg Light in Karl Doutendey's Photographs" is more than just a biography of one of the first photographers who worked in the capital of Imperial Russia. The author, immersing the reader in the social atmosphere of Nikolayev and then the post-reform Petersburg, tells in some detail about the beginnings of photography in Russia and Europe, shows both the professional environment of the master and the psychological environment in which the pioneers of photography had to act. The book is written in clear language and is perfectly illustrated with first-class artifacts of early photography.
The magnificent works of Karl Doutendey have been in oblivion for over 150 years and are now celebrating their true resurrection. Alexander Kitaev's book sheds light not only on the amazing life and photographic heritage of the pioneer of photography, but also makes the cultural history of the second half of the 19th century excitingly interesting.
Dmitry Severyukhin,
Doctor of Art History, Professor
They were not bored
Commentary by Alexander Kitaev
Since its publication in 1839, light painting has begun to rapidly conquer the world. Photographers, being in a reckless and non-stop movement, either climbing rocky peaks, or diving into the depths of the ocean, in a historically short time captured the globe, after which they rushed into the abyss of the universe and increasingly began to penetrate into the cosmos of human souls. Retransmitted for more than two centuries in a row, magazine and newspaper - "Photography has reached extraordinary perfection in our days" - an unfading cliché of headlines about her military operations. This attack by photographers on all fronts, on all spheres of human activity, on the centuries-old foundations of the universe, was accompanied (and accompanied) by continuous modernization and improvement of lighting tools, multiplying the arsenal of politicians and confessors, scientists and artists, warriors and civilians. However, even today, the beginning of this grand all-encompassing invasion remains poorly understood. Despite Benjamin's long-standing statement - "The fog enveloping the origins of photography is still not so thick ..." - attempts to touch the spring remain completely rudimentary, and as a result, today many avant-garde figures of the pioneers of photography are barely visible through the depths of merciless years. There are many reasons for this, and it is not a trace of them here, but it is important to note that the rejection of the technical nature of the new art has played a bad joke on humanity: for more than a century, the most reliable shelter for incunabula in the early years of photography were only easily vulnerable registries and family albums. Of course, the impact of light painting was not as obvious and visible as the steam engine, the construction of railways, the introduction of electricity and aeronautics, but of all the technical innovations generated in the Iron Age and stunning contemporaries, only photography had a chance to gain the status of another muse and join their round dance. But that didn't happen. 
“Photography freed painting from boring work, primarily from family portraits,” said Auguste Renoir, making a career as a secular portrait painter. It was this, in the opinion of the eminent impressionist, a gloomy work that became the role of Doutendey and most of the first professionals in photography. They were not bored, and the "leaders of the sun" in just the first half century of the existence of light painting filled family albums with such a number of impressions that all renoirs of all countries of the world would not have done together. Millions of earthlings willingly appeared before their illuminated shells and preserved their authentic appearance for posterity. Meanwhile, the entry of the photographic portrait into everyday practice, into everyday life (the area of the elegant is a taboo!) Was far from peaceful and sometimes aroused harsh rejection of many intellectuals. In the second half of the 19th century, the "new kind of painting" was reviled, humiliated, but there is not a single detractor who would not come to the photographer to remove his portrait, and then proudly send it to his relatives and friends. And nevertheless, since "people made the sun - the beauty and the driving force of the universe - to be a painter" (Bulgarin), from the arrogance of connoisseurs of beauty and philistine neglect, innumerable precious "pictures from nature" have disappeared. In a historically short period of time, light paintings were lost, perhaps, much more than any other cultural monuments from wars and revolutions, fires, floods and other natural and man-made disasters.
For me, there is no doubt that Karl Douthendey is one of the key figures in 19th century photography, and the study of his life and professional path is essential for understanding the processes taking place in society and in photography at that time. The master stood at the origins of the now favorite kind of activity of the human race and lived with photography, multiplying and improving it, for more than half a century. During the distance they traveled together, light painting evolved from a silver plate, on which Daguerre made a sunbeam capture the visible world, to the discovery of unknown rays by Doutendey's client Konrad Roentgen, capable of painting the invisible on a light-sensitive glass photographic plate.1 However, the vast majority of Doutendey's created impressions today are lost. , and the survivors are quarreled in different countries. (The latter, however, is not depressing, because internationalism is a generic feature of photography.) In such a starting situation, work began to recreate the biography of the pioneer. 
The pressure exerted by the practical Karl Doutendey on his romantic offspring turned out to be so powerful that, accompanying the "prodigal son" on his travels around the world, haunted him for many years. Perhaps the tension subsided only when the book "The Spirit of My Father" was published from the pen of the no longer young and famous writer Max Doutendey. In it, setting aside his favorite wandering rhymes, Maximilian distinctly and talentedly retells his father's stories, heard from childhood, about his first experiments in photography, the troubles he had outstripped in Russia and his passionate but vain desire to transfer his life's work into his sons' hands. In addition to this invaluable source, we owe the writer one more treasure: having spent his life in continuous wanderings, by some miracle he managed to preserve his father's archive, part of which later ended up in the Würzburg municipal archives as part of the "fund of the writer Max Doutendey." family photographic portraits during the earthly life of their first owners, as well as during the life of the first generation of heirs, did not arouse any public interest and bore the function of exclusively family memory. (And this is their difference from a pictorial portrait.) Only in the turbulent 20th century for Europe, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many family archives involuntarily ended up in museum funds, and then only as an auxiliary utilitarian, illustrative material for certain studies in the field material culture.
And here it is impossible not to pay attention to the difference between the family album of an ordinary client and the photographer's own archive. In both: dear faces, but if in the first there are completed and paid samples of someone else's work, then their author-performer has something else. Every photographer knows that just the pictures taken "for themselves" and "for their own", and not for a capricious client, is the surest key to understanding the aspirations, searches and methods of work of a colleague. Who, if not the closest relatives and friends, can patiently endure the exercises of a light painter mastering innovations with due humility and understanding? Who, if not them, turning into uncomplaining extras, become the first models of the artist seeking perfection, participants in his endless experiments, his risky experiments, during which, going into the unknown without fear of failure, the portraitist can try new optics, test photographic materials, put on dubious light , practice new poses, composition techniques, etc., etc.? Dowtenday, like many photographers of all future generations, honed his skills in photographing loved ones, and fortunately we had quite a lot of such photographs at our disposal. I should not fall into art history analysis, and Douthendey never called himself an artist, but it's amazing how gracefully his pictures with his daughters, sons, and other relatives are arranged, how accurate and laid-back many single portraits in his performance are - all these are signs not only of high skill and a fairly developed sense of beauty, but also of unconditional talent.
Without pretending to have a complete overview of all the surviving works of Karl Doutendey, the author set himself the task of identifying only photographs that reveal and explain the main stages of the professional activity of the master and the milestones of the formation of a once new profession - a photographer. Whether it succeeded is for the reader to judge.
A. Kitaev
Source http://www.photographer.ru/events/review/6900.htm
Photos by Alexander Kitaev can be seen here
Shadogram, rayogram, photogram ... This list can be continued by specifying one more name: Kitaev's photogram. In the late 1980s, or rather, in 1989, Alexander Kitaev "discovered" photography without a camera. It turned out that if you place an object on light-sensitive paper and turn on a bright light, you get an unusual image that only partially resembles the object itself. But if most of his famous predecessors worked with simple contours and silhouettes, then Alexander Kitaev began to experiment with volumetric glass and work with a ray of light like a brush. Light becomes the main thing in his compositions. Light creates a new reality that attracts the eye and invites you to travel in its depths, and objects acquire meaning and significance depending on how much they are filled with light. And here you need a brilliant look of an artist who,
as a "magic crystal", creates a magical "shift" in the perception of the world.
IG: Alexander, how did the photogram begin for you? What prompted you to do this?
Alexander Kitaev: There were several messages for this. Let's start with the one that may seem rather mundane at first glance. My favorite camera, with which I performed my artistic gestures, began to die - all its vital organs began to malfunction under the influence of time. At that time I worked at a factory as a photographer, and I had plenty of government-owned equipment, but for government purposes I also worked with my camera, since it was much better: it gave a better image, there were better lenses, a better shutter, etc.
So, it was more and more difficult to work with a sick camera, and there was no opportunity to acquire a new instrument. My active creative life required finding an adequate way out, and I decided to take photographs without a camera.
Another reason that prompted me to take up the photogram was the desire to leave the utilitarian craft. I wanted abstract thinking and freedom from the actual photographic image.
IG: Were you familiar with similar images made by your predecessors? Did you try to repeat someone at first, or did you immediately start doing something of your own?
Alexander Kitaev: When I got carried away with the photogram, I became curious who, when and how did something like that. So I learned that the first photographic images in Russia were "light pictures" - contact prints of plant leaves obtained in the capital Petersburg by the botanist of the Imperial Academy of Sciences Yu. F. Fritzsche on light-sensitive materials made in 1839 by one of the fathers of photography - Fox Talbot. In the 1920s, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a representative of the famous Bauhaus art school, sought to create artistic images using photography, and not documents, as was the practice in his time. In the same years, the world-famous Russian artist Alexander Rodchenko, whose photographs are quite rare in publications, and his contemporary, the creator of the Russian avant-garde Georgy Zimin, whose works are also difficult to see, as they are mostly in private foreign collections, were engaged in photogramming.
Of course, I tried working with leaves, everyone tried it, and my first photograms were pretty simple. But I quickly realized that I was not interested in making a silhouette photogram, I was not interested in building some recognizable images from these silhouettes (for example, portraits from paper clips). I wanted to completely "untie" and make images of space and time without relying on the object and its obtrusive contour.
For me, the photogram has replaced the still life, which I have never done. I built compositions of transparent or translucent objects and tried to see their interaction with each other and with space.
IG: What feelings did you experience when you looked into the fantasy world through a glass bottle?
Alexander Kitaev: For me it was an absolute hobby, since my photogram images had no applied value, unlike the Bauhaus or Rodchenko, whose photograms were used in applied design to create covers, posters, etc. It was a game of freedom, I created space , I felt like a demiurge.
Working with familiar objects, I saw how the essence invisible to us emerges from them, how beautiful they are, how they want to be photographed (according to Baudrillard).
IG: How did your cycles evolve, after all, these are not series, but cycles that can last indefinitely and gradually supplement?
Alexander Kitaev: That is why I called them cycles. I must admit, I didn’t do this all the time. When I was immersed in the world of the photogram for a month or
two, it was impossible to take a direct photograph - I was all in this space. Then real life pulled me out of this state and forced me to take up applied photography again. The first formulated cycle I called "incognita container" or, more simply, "unknown container" (1989-1990), in which I explored the plastic, cut-off, compositional and other possibilities of glass containers, then I just got used to and looked closely at the objects.
In order to understand how to work with this or that vessel, at first I even started to make a gallery of portraits of bottles, their inner light appearance. The main thing was to choose the light and exposure in such a way that the silhouette, glare, and the internal structure of the object worked. Curious things turned out. When a glare suddenly splashes out outside the object, you understand that the object lives not only in a space enclosed within itself (a bottle, for example), but it also casts some fluids, rays in all directions, which I tried to fix.
I. G.: Were there any favorite models?
Alexander Kitaev: Yes, I came across an object with which I worked for several years. He painted very beautifully inside himself, these rays lived their own lives, you could catch them in some fantastic combinations; it was a broken jug. When I left the factory, I was too lazy to pick it up: it seemed to me that it was a dead end, so much had already been done with it. But after a while I realized that I was sorely missing him and there was no replacement for him.
IG: Having seen an object, you can immediately guess what will come of it?
Alexander Kitaev: In different ways. Sometimes I feel what works and what doesn't. Sometimes, from the simplest and most inconspicuous bottles, wonderful images are obtained, but seemingly beautiful and graceful objects turn out to be uninteresting, or I just do not know how to photograph them well.
I. G.: Have there been self-repetitions, and how difficult was it to avoid them?
Alexander Kitaev: The world of photo abstraction seemed to me endless, but, nevertheless, I saw my dead ends and tried to get away from the object. The photogram is always dictated by the scale of the object, the silhouette of a half-liter bottle fits on a 30x40 sheet. When I saw that the rays scattering from it, which I am trying to preserve, create a much larger image plane, it became interesting for me to work further. Initially, my light source was a magnifier, later I began to build some installations that could allow me to transform an object and create much larger pictures from an object of the same scale. For this I used glasses, mirrors. For example, meter-sized photograms are made from tiny cones that fit everything: their silhouettes, their shadows, their highlights. Then I came up with the idea of transforming the sheet of light-sensitive paper itself to create a different drawing. Application
toning and the use of different types of photographic paper also provided additional opportunities for creating unique images.
IG: Were your photogram cycles created in turn or intersected?
Alexander Kitaev: Of course, they did. It was pure play for me. All the time I came up with something new. For example, he began to create images, pouring sheets of light-sensitive materials with a developer.
Chemography - this is the name of this process - is a very exciting experience! In almost one breath, I created photo-painting pictures, which subsequently developed into two cycles: "The First Days of Creation" and "Listening to Music" (1990-1991). The "spree" into chemography lasted quite a long time and put off the photogram by a year and a half, until a new idea appeared. In those years I bought a very expensive Russian-American album "Photos of the Earth from Space". I saw the Earth and realized that I see the same structures and textures in my glass objects. It was
insanely interesting, space has opened. This is how the series "Forgotten Zodiac" and "Landscapes" (1994-1995) were born.
When I tried to change the light sources, to place them inside or at any point on the surface of the object, I again saw an amazing
picture. I came across an object that, during such experiments, suddenly began to give some physiological images with erotic overtones. These images have added up another cycle, which I call "The Bottle Game" (1994).
There were also such photograms that I liked very much, but did not fit directly into this or that cycle. And I came up with a name for them: Travels of Light. Essentially, all photograms are travels of light. This cycle is large enough and can be constantly updated.
I.G .: The photogram, with its unique aesthetics and limitless compositional possibilities, perhaps does not correspond to any
genre of photography. Can it be attributed to a special type of fine art?
Alexander Kitaev: Working with photograms, I studied the general laws of fine art, it was just more convenient for me to do it on photographic paper. It turned out to be very unexpected for me that my attempts to train on new forms led to a change in the perception of the world and the creation of images that are far removed from photography. I liked the curious interpretation of the concepts of “light painting” and “photography” by V. T. Grünthal in the book “Photo illustration. Light painting. Transformation. Photomontage". Noting that the word "light painting" is an exact translation of the word "photography", the author did not put an equal sign between them, but argued that photography is only one of the special cases of photography. Developing this idea, he wrote: “Obtaining an image with the help of light painting may not need the optical systems necessary for photography. Having passed a centuries-old path, light painting is still applicable in its
in its original and pure form, but already with the use of the technical achievements that were introduced by the photography generated by it ”. Thus, according to Grünthal, everything that is written with the "pencil of nature", as Talbot designated his invention, in time immemorial was divided into two directions: light painting as a pure art and photography as applied skill.
IG: Your photograms invariably evoke a wide range of emotions from misunderstanding and even rejection to complete delight. Is it possible to
to somehow help the uncomprehending viewer and is it necessary to do this?
Alexander Kitaev: Each person is endowed with the ability to perceive, but not everyone has developed a skill from this ability. Bringing some kind of literature into abstract compositions (for this it is enough to title only the cycles, and not each image separately), it is not at all necessary to force the viewer to read this literature. It is much more valuable to provide freedom of reading artistic expression.
I.G .: Despite the fact that the photogram remains rare and exotic today, it is a hobby of few fans of casual, unpredictable
games are, fortunately, connoisseurs of such creativity. Is it a pity to part with a unique work that has no circulation?
Alexander Kitaev: If I published my work, it already lives its own independent life, and its life is much longer than mine. If appreciated and purchased - it's nice.