issue 4 | winter 201 5
IMBALANCE issue 4 | winter 2015
PORTFOLIO Cover: Siarhei Kanaplianik Editorial 1 Essay: Nastasia Khralovich 2 Essay: Nadia Buzhan 3 Essay: Maksim Sarychau 6 Essay: Julia Volchok 8 Essay: Alexandra Soldatova 1 0 "Extended Family": Anna Bundeleva 1 2 Andrey Karachoun 26 "Muay BY": Denis Dziuba 38 "Transition Time": Julia Nazarova 54 "After": Siarhei Kanaplianik 70 Follow my Instagram: Zarina Bobko 80
Editor: Alexandra Soldatova English version: Olga Bubich Web page: Maxim Dosko Informational support: Znyata.com Studio67
Editorial:
Tcouldhis have issue has an open topic. Any works been submitted, in any number and from completely different photographers. Not being united by any common idea, apart from the author’s love to what (s)he does, five portfolios have been put together to make the issue.
All of them differ from one another significantly, and I asked myself a question: what made the photographers shoot various projects in that very particular way? And in general what is it which makes them (us) work today, and, to put it simple, why do we photograph? In this ordinary questioning, I asked five young photographers to write a short text, or an essay, on the topic «Why do I photograph?». I got wonderful, very sincere texts, in which, I think, many would recognize themselves, probably in different periods of their creative growth. And it would not be honest, remaining not only the editor, but the author myself, not to give my own answer to this question which somehow has turned into the issue’s topic. Also answering to the most popular question which concerns the texts: why and who needs these personal opinions, these photographers’ «confessions» – first of all, they need them themselves. Having named your own interest, having outlined the place, we automatically keep on moving, we pass through a particular point of self-understanding, and thus – grow.
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NASTASIA KHRALOVICH W hy do I photograph, or 5 reasons to grab a camera I have no exact answer to this question, but I do have a few guesses. First of all, I am a kleptomaniac, and if I see beautiful light or a person with interesting appearance or just an attractive fragment of reality, I have such a strong desire to keep it all to myself. And I push the button. Secondly, I am interested in people and their stories. I am not really into writing, I am more interested in making pictures and putting them together. And sometimes in video, too. Thirdly, photography is a suitable and comfortable way of speaking about something exciting and important. I am better at getting emotions captured in pictures than in an exercise-book. Fourthly, I like the subjectivity of photography, because even the same angle can give you snapshots different in moods and style. Fifthly, I photograph because I feel.
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NADIA BUZHAN M y relations with photography started with an argument. It was a discussion
between a professor and ambitious Journalism students. The students were given one week to create and implement an Internet project. When you are told «You won’t make it, I don’t believe you!», thus they make you do it and you make them believe you will. We created a test site aimed at delivering news only through images. The problem was that none of our team members was a photographer. Well, but generally speaking, it did not seem so important to us. We all took small cheap cameras and started shooting. In this way a University task brought to live one more «girl with a digital camera» who was dreaming of becoming a photographer. It was spontaneous, immediate, absolutely out of the blue… and cool. My attention gradually switched to photojournalism. But only not long ago that I started thinking in a bit more serious way about the question: why photography is needed and whether it is necessary at all. My answer is – «yes, it is». Just because photography is memory. It is a document that can show in a simple and clear way how something happened. It makes me feel really cool realizing that in future someone will be able to see the same thing that I see now. Maybe I will not become a popular and famous photographer, but I can make my friend and close people a little bit happier. Photography is my job. It sounds trivial, but this is how I earn my living. So, why do I photograph? Because someone must do it. Because it is necessary. Because there is nothing else I can do. Because I like it.
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MAKSIM SARYCHAU Pdohotographing, I speak about things that not leave me indifferent. Each image is a word in the conscious statement I dare to pronounce accepting the risk of calling myself an artist. If earlier I used to get the effect of a stone thrown into a shopwindow, now I aspire for more complicated constructions. They must not only evoke feelings, but also pose uncomfortable questions, break the walls from the inside, or maybe to build new roads. Photography is an incredible excuse which allows me to live other people’s lives and see the forbidden, to get a better understanding of the time and place where we have happened to find ourselves. This is a point of contact with reality, it pushes us out of the comfort zone, forcing to discover others and be discovered by them, to overcome our fears. It is an attempt to grab what is felt in the air, but cannot be verbalized. Before making my first step, I ask myself a question «what for?». And every time I find the answer in the daily routine, in the things that are impossible to accept and sometimes even to comprehend. This inner confrontation strikes a spark which gives birth to a flame.
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JULIA VOLCHOK A few years ago I already wrote an essay on the topic why I photograph or something like this. Then I wrote I saw
«something» and needed to express it somehow and tell other people about it. But since I cannot express it in any other way but through photography, it does help me to have this «something» reflected. I cannot find this essay now but I do remember it almost verbatim. And now it seems to me that this is the opinion that every other photographer would share. But at present I have an absolutely different point of view. For me photography has turned into something different. That also sounds rather trivial. Generally speaking, there are no more original answers to this question left. Well, let it be so. Now I understand that without photographing I cannot get into the places which as a person with no camera I would not be able to access. However hard I try to make friends with people, get closer to them, become their interlocutor, sooner or later the camera would pop up between us. And I like it. Because it is the camera which gives me a possibility to socialize. Just talking to them, be with them, often living some moments together with them, comparing our experience. I often do not need my camera, and recently I have started to notice that I shoot less. It seems to me that I have not discovered anything more interesting yet. I mean people. Believe me you would not find a more trivial answer. But it is true. In communicating with people there is its own adrenaline, its own charm, dangers and adventures. And what it most interesting – its own story. People and their stories. That is why I photograph. You know that there are many films where they show you adult people finding their own letters addressed to them as grownups. It seems to me that my previous essay was such a type of message to my current «self» where I answered the question «why do I photograph?». And this one would be one more message to my future «self». I am curious to make a comparison. IMBALANCE 8
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ALEXANDRA SOLDATOVA W hile reading my colleagues’ texts, I feel joy and alongside with it – nostalgia,
courage. It is scary just because of the fact that someone unfamiliar to you would see who you really are. But at the same time they would also see who you are not, because as soon as the project statement becomes possible, you are already far ahead of it.
stating that each of them, each of their answers, could have belonged to me some time ago. For me photography was a means of not being idle and a possibility to see the beautiful, a pass to inaccessible places, a collection of stolen curiosities, a And the question rises again: why should way to solve the inner conflict. I hope all my own personal matters become these are not disappearing at the moment. someone else’s, which in order to be shown require huge efforts of will? For me an important point was when In the given case, a project is not only my photography turned into a practice, a kind own (personal) starting opinion, which I of meditation, a way to put an end to all would or would not like to experience, possible conversations and inner neither is it the opinion that would have assessment processes, to find myself in a been formed in me when my work is over. space as it is. This is that common gap, the space the starting points, where the Now (or recently), it has also become a between of the changes in my way to understand, «to digest» the documentation and in the process which happens experience which I do not want to accept opinion to me while is done. In this in any other manner at all. In such a case a space there arethenowork as well as project is a means of finding a clue, an there are probably noanswers, But there answer, a way of understanding of the is something I cannotquestions. a name while process. However, the question about the working, and also theregive is something that reason of “digesting” something which is already exists, I know it, in the film before not close, which scares or revolts remains it is developed. open-ended. Probably, today the only honest answer to the question would be: in order to be able to hear yourself. Then what I shoot, no matter if it is a totally documentary story or not, becomes my attitude to it. Not a critical statement, but a way of living through this event even a little bit. Thus, every step made towards the viewer In order to show the result becomes the revelation of something crucially personal, belonging only to myself. It becomes the act of IMBALANCE 10
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ANNA BUNDELEVA Extended Family
E
« xtended Family» is a photographic «family tree» that consists of two semantic parts covering maternal and paternal family branches. Since we all come from «mixed couples», both the lines have different family stories, myths and images. Genealogical, or family, tree served as a basis for researching intergenerational information obtained from our ancestors. I must say that once finding myself in the woods (it was probably some very special time), I came across an ordinary tree with such an expressive form of the hollow, which was actually longing to become a frame for some painting or photograph. Then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to accept the forest’s invitation and adapt its space to my own needs. I might hang the portraits in frames similar to the size of the hollow that remained in my memory. Since then a lot of time has passed, as well as my attempts to find a suitable form of the realization of my idea about «family tree». In my project I try to find a personal understanding of what a family tree is, starting from the schematic description of genealogical connections between people and my attempts to give them a literal visualization. The research is aimed at my relationships with my family, at realizing what place and importance they have in
my life. This is my attempt to make sense of my past, and altogether with my present, my personal and family traumas. By asking myself the same eternal questions «who am I?» «where do I come from?», and «what for?», through the old photos of my relatives that keep and record their experiences and memories of what happened and what could not be remembered. Placing the photos in tree hollows, I create a special space that belongs only to myself, it is a place where I record the images of my «extended family» as talismans, as my helpers and parting words that support me. This is a kind of a wall that I feel behind my back, where all the members of my «extended family» – dead or alive – have a strong therapeutic power. I do not exclude the fact that I am not the only one to implement the family tree idea by placing the photos in trees, but the concept of family also drives me. Maybe my project is a definite necessity, a kind of "invisible devotion to the family," dictated to me by the chain of generations and the results of their relationship, where as a chain link, consciously or not, I just repeat what I have to do putting all in their places. To render the «invisible loyalty to the family» visible, it is so important for me to «give seats» and «locate» my relatives in the trees in front of me, to give them new frames in order to render them free to live their lives. IMBALANCE 13
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ANDREY KARACHOUN andreykarachoun. livejournal. com
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DENIS DZIUBA dziuba. by
Muay BY
Tdistorted he Thais call non-Thai “farang” (a version of the English “foreigner”). There is nothing offensive in this word: they know and respect many “farangs” – first of all, Thai boxers from abroad.
Farang Igor Klimovich, a Thai boxer from the Minsk club “Kick Fighter”, has spent a year at the birthplace of Thai box. He has managed to get trained in various clubs, win several tournaments and be deceived by his own agent. This is a story about one of the most complicated periods of his life in Thailand: about moving from Pattaya to Bangkok in order to get ready for Toyota Cup, about his struggle with a knee injury and about getting used to the idea of his future fatherhood.
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JULIA NAZAROVA https://www. behance. net/juli_nazarova
Transition Time
II nrealize my life there are some moments when that I am … "no longer here, but
neither there yet". And then anxiety comes. The unknown is waiting ahead with routine and fatigue left behind. Fear overcomes me. Fear of the unknown. This is a frightening and unclear transition time. After all, we never know what we might encounter beyond… And there is only one step to be made. One step ahead. Moving to the unknown… Transition is a state between the death of your old and the birth of your new self. This is a time of balancing between the realities. This series of photos is about looking for my own self in the conditions of the absence of close people who have always been determining myself and my place in this world. It is about growing old, about loneliness and a possibility of relying only on myself. About the liberation from the imposed stereotypes about myself. About searching for self-worth… .
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SIARHEI KANAPLIANIK After
What is left after all is gone?
When recalling a house where you were born and living when a child, the first thing that comes to your mind is winter glass covered by frost patterns and raspberry bushes near the porch. When recalling a friend who is not here anymore – the song of «Aquarium» and a candle in his hands crossed on the chest when we were giving him the last farewell. Recalling the one you used to be in love with, you think about a cold spring night walk with cheap red wine. What is left after? All these are always small things, which do fill our lives in with the force which makes us go ahead.
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ZARINA BOBKO Follow my Instagram
CTheyomingconstantly to a café, people do not talk. reply to messages and send pictures of ordered dishes which they have taken with their mobiles three seconds ago. Some café owners deliberately put signs «We have no wi-fi, talk to each other». Why taking a snapshot
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and hearing a neighbour’s inhale-exhale look equally sentimental and at the same time both the body movements now have equal value in the reflex-emotional needs satisfaction? I tried to explain this fact by the influence of PR-technologies, Internet marketing, in social «friending». My
modest nature drives me to digging deep where all rests on the surface. The cultural code of our times is an image, it is obvious even to teenagers, primary school kids who happened to have an iphone got it right away and adopted it as an instrument for their future career growth. Probably, the text would die out as it already has for those who were born in the 2000s. What is going on?
I must be trendy, as the last selfie in the Instagram with 100.000 followers in the profile. So, I will articulate the first thought using the «ordinary sapiens» discourse. Its accessible form was given by the contemporary Belarussian writer Viktor Martinovich: «When a person is of no interest to anyone, he dies» (1). There is nothing new, the same XVIII century Berkeley with his postulate “esse est percipi” («to be is to be perceived»). Surely, Berkeley could not anticipate our world’s iconic turn, so he used “esse est percipi” to express his subjective idealism: there is nothing material existing in the world, any object lies exclusively in our conscious, in human perception. Strangely enough there is belief popular among people that «houses, mountains, rivers and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding».(2) Berkeley ascribes human conscious, spirit, with the attribute of sensitivity, that is “esse est percipere” («to be is to perceive»): «But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them; … This perceiving, active being is what I called MIND, SPIRIT, SOUL, or MYSELF. By which words I do not
denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist». (3) It is absurd that subjective idealism has turned into reality and its virus has spread not onto external matter, but to the subject. Not directly, but indirectly. Today “esse est percipi” and “esse est percipere” have found their single location named «myself». Do you have any idea about people who live in Kamchatka villages? Doctors travel by helicopters to reach those who are sick. Do you know that Eugenii’s granny from the fourth floor suffers from Alzheimer and every time when she thinks about you she believes you to be a neighbour who has recently bought an apartment? Well, what difference does it make? You have no idea about her, just like she buries you due to her physiological illness. You do not know about those far away Kamchatka villages, about their dwellers, because to you this whole list given above does not exist. Probably, something might pop up in your thoughts, but only as a fact. We perceive facts as statistics, they are not personified, thus dead. When do heroes leave the pages of their books, break through the shadows of their lives? When they become an image and at the same time – a replicated one. If the image is not replicated, it must be sacrificed to the God of PR at the level of hundreds of thousands of followers, no matter if it is Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or an offline event which has been presented all across the globe. If you have not been noticed, you will remain the underwater part of the iceberg. Today texts also bring you publicity with the text becoming an attribute. «Is it the article IMBALANCE 81
written by Mr Manazhevsky? It is impressive! By the way, and who is this Mr Manazhevsky?..» So it is advisable to show and replicate Manazhevsky thus bringing him to life not as an author, but as Mr Manazhevsky. Stories go to the background or just Manazhevsky’s talent which would live its own life. «The death of the author» is a credo of postmodernism, but I am sure I am not the right person to tell you about it. What does it mean to replicate yourself in
follow him/her. I was keeping an eye on the discussion about the popularity of a 16-years-old teenager who has more than 200 followers on YouTube and 80.000 followers on the Net. I watched the videos to get the secret of the boy’s popularity. The guy shoots mediocre videos and fashionable Instagram selfies and not only, but judging by the number of Internet video content followers he is in advance of the most popular information resource of his country. This is what one of the commentators writes: «A 16-years-old pupil from Gomel has 28 times more YouTube followers than the largest Belarussian online-media TUT.BY-TV. (…) According to social networks and YouTube statistics, the best news channel in the world now is RussiaToday (its indices are better than those of CNN and BBC, it has recently had 2 billion views, ~2B followers). However, a boy from Sweden who comments games, DiePewPie, has the indices that are 15 times higher (33B), with practically zero expenses on production».
order to exist and how is it possible? At present we are physically free from routine labour which can be delegated to home robots or services sector. More time has been made available to us, but genetic memory demands to have it filled in with explicit repetition, now not at survival level, but at the level of hedonism and if the process has been launched effectively – of narcissism. This is the level of action and entertainment: I am going to push an iphone button and get images, images will trigger reactions, so everyone will know about me (= I exist!). If I do not take pictures publicly, I will not be noticed, I will remain dead or will exist only in my own reality or in the realities of those who From the Internet-marketing point, a 16know me personally. years-old teenager can monetize his pages: popular profiles or group pages are In all this crossposting there no place for purposefully created for advertisement. memory any more: your snapshot has Advertiser will come to those who already been noticed but in ten minutes the viewer have a contact with the target audience will forget about you and a minute later and will make an offer the owner will not you will exist only for those who are still decline. But the question is not about to react to you. That is why periodicity money. We are tired of the material world becomes an important attribute: if to make race, we make an info-product and people snapshots without addiction or periodicity, are ready to pay us not only money but they will forget about you. This is the their attention. basis of not only contemporary images streaming, but also of popular blogging. The debate was becoming hotter, while I The blogger keeps abreast of the news, was doing my best to unravel the speaks about daily events in an easy and teenager’s phenomenon. The British pleasant way and thousands of people photographer Martin Parr once said: «I IMBALANCE 82
Russian Model Соня Esman, London, 750,000 followers. Little velcro babies", 92,500 likes.
photograph boring things because this is bright illuminations, gift packages and promising slogans each of us is left face to life». face with everyday routine which we are Sooner or later a holiday gets to an end, a eager to turn into a holiday again. Maybe series of monotonous everyday life has to this is where the popularity of this or that be faced before the next holiday comes channel or social network profile owner and it is in this routine where a person comes from: these people tell us not about will have to learn to exist harmoniously incidents or statistics (as information or tete-a-tete with his/her own self. On the entertainment resources do), not about other hand, the state divides its citizens’ holidays (as the state does), they do not lives «from holiday to holiday» and after broadcast news (mass media). They attract IMBALANCE 83
the audience by the fact that they are the same people like you and me, they have the same dull routine, they belong to the same life and they do it every day. They hint to us, that we can put off our despair about the routine: even celebrities know what routine is. «Now I am going to tell you how I make salads with friends for the New Year, what I downloaded on my iphone and how I get crazy about Instagram», so let us live together - the
more the merrier, together we will have action and entertainment. We take photos, we make selfies and all this happens everywhere – at concerts and appointments, meetings and revolutions. We make news, because if we do not push the button and dowload a snapshot, we will not assert our presence and thus move beyond, find ourselves out of the context. And then if I do not do it, someone else
Belarussian video blogger Dima Ermuzevich, 102,000 followers 23,200 likes IMBALANCE 84
will.
problem of illegal migration the photography talks about, becomes evident only after you read the author’s caption, because without it people in the photo are ourselves, when we look at the sunset, skydive, watch a football match at the stadium.
When I saw a photography made by John Stanmeyer, the winner in “Contemporary Issues” category of Word Press Photo 2014, I immediately had an idea: «Why he? There are more burning problems in the world and there are much more powerful shots». But after five seconds I To hold in your hand a mediator is to hold took a deep breath – we are all struck by a remote control of your own life. If you technologies, we all are addicted. The turn off the channel, a collapse appears –
Darren Burton Photographer | Dreamer Philadelphia, PA I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list - Susan Sontag, 1,738 likes IMBALANCE 85
you are over in front of yourself. You are politically comfortable – you are busy with «your own weapon: «Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed». (4) For the followers you are the personal story of yourself which is breaking their boring loneliness. The most difficult thing is to accept that one cannot make a conclusion here. If the carnival of «public diaries» will ever come to an end, we will get into a new slavery. The escape from oneself to oneself through the media is more than cool, but the password for getting back is «archaic» labour which we left somewhere outside the ship. 1. V. Martinovich «Language» 2. G. Berkeley «A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge» 3. G. Berkeley «A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge» 4. G. Orwell «1984»
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Topics of the magazine for 2015: issue 5: "Typology, Collection, List", submissions till April 7th? issue 6: "Near Landscape", submissions till Luly 7th, issue 7: "Rithuals and Celabrations", submissions till October 7th. http://www.imbalancemagazine.com/submission/.
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