…Unsweetened by Alexander Borshchagovsky

I recall a casual fleeting phrase from Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita: “Are you a photographer? (…) Interesting work. Artistic work, in some ways.”

Well, it certainly is, but in what ways? What qualities should a photograph possess to be classified as art? There is only one way to answer this question, I presume, and it consists in taking a close look at a single image, being a deliberate (might as well be unplanned or hit-and-miss) production of the machine and human vision, intuition, an artistic insight into reality.

Tens or maybe hundreds of millions of lenses on Earth are constantly targeting everyday life, scratching its surface, producing drab, uninspired, flat likenesses of life, its formal copies. It is not true that every photograph is of interest, it is a delusion. When you are about to look at hundreds and hundreds of images, which have piled up in drawers and cardboard boxes, it is very tempting to get rid of most of them once and for all, but you are likely to resist out of concerns that have little to do with photography art.

It is unorthodox to say that the majority of photographs are veracious, although not equally important, true records of nature until the moment when the lens captures… a person, a model of sui generis kind. The presence of a poser, a person aware or at least suspicious of being captured, multiplies the amount of worthless photographic waste and proclaims the triumph of platitude and banality. Cameras in the hands of tourists become a disaster, an instrument of torture—depressing columns of markedly cheerful people against cathedrals, palaces, fountains, famous monuments are like crowds of extras shot from dawn to dusk (and all night long thanks to more and more sophisticated devices).

A small, increasingly smart camera is a man’s servant and—in a sense—a thief. It seemingly accepts “for safekeeping” an important life material which it never gives back in full to our memory and our superior (because it not only records!) eye. The photographic film is entrusted with what must belong to our subjective, dynamic, changing inner life. We toy with the idea of helping our memory—we believe that a photographic document can relive the past in a vibrant and clear-cut form. But it doesn’t. It deprives us of our genuine sharpness of sight, our subjective vision (not merely a standard perception of color)—everything that is so important to art. We are lulled into a false sleep, we carelessly outsourced the inimitable process of nature perception to machines, even though live imagination will always remain its essence. What was lost in a fragment of life, in an eye-catching shot, what was not seen by the lens, has gone forever and will never gain depth. The moment of truth has passed, we settled for its likeness, gave credit to something painfully similar to the prototype and placed another simulacrum in a never-ending photo album. Faces, faces, faces… They flash by, while our eyes and heart remain impassive, not stricken by a whisper of Fate. Dozens of neat portraits will come and go, before you suddenly, unexpectedly hear the calling horn of Fate: in a long row of carefully selected faces you see the one that tells much more about the nation.

Ivanovsky Convent. 1980s

The text in a recent brochure to Dashevsky’s exhibition The Sunken Time (1964–1989) is overfilled with the hottest social topics. Although it states that “the photographs on display express the author’s take on the ordinary life of ordinary people” and that the exhibition is by no means a review of “seminal achievements of the evil empire”, it at the same time suggests that “his works showing the life of the Atlantis of socialism” may help to “grasp the reasons of social catastrophe which broke out on the sixth part of the world.”

I would like to protect the wonderful works by Mikhail Dashevsky from ephemeral populist compliments: fortunately, they contain much more of the eternal, of an unbiased person, not a manikin of the epoch, but rather a human being in a native environment. Of course, the flexible, trained muscle of associative thinking and a load of vivid visual stereotypes (which are sometimes accumulated against our will) may stimulate any journalese and most daring generalizations which only distract us from art. Thankfully, in his best works, Mikhail Dashevsky helps us to feel and conceive the difference between the formal photography and a work of photo art.

…Two faces emerge from the blackness of the background, two heads in a hidden mysterious move: an old woman and her granddaughter. I say “emerge”, but they seem to perpetually exist in this pitch-black darkness filled with indiscernible people, voices, glare of unseen eyes.

This world is inhabited, although we see only two faces, and there was no need to highlight other figures or even arms and hands of these two. The corporal, physical integrity of the image, its validity are absolute, while all other details depend on our culture of perception: our imagination and gift for loving life in all its forms. It is needless to explain that there is some motion in both of them—the old woman and the girl. Despite the seeming stillness, they move; they are in a public place, but it is neither a doctor’s waiting room nor a park bench—they are within a spontaneous flow, a journey towards a simple worldly goal and the movement of generations, the flow of time itself. There is someone very close to them, unseen to us. Protected by her grandmother’s love, the girl looks at him with a primordial, placid interest which sadly would not arise in the old woman any more. She is deep in thoughts of the past, consumed by day-to-day worries of life, which, I think, are not mean or self-centered. She presents a combination of human dignity, strength, and some sort of ordinariness. The way she is ordinary is not dull or discouraging, it invokes respect and tenderness. How beautiful are the half-hidden eyes of the old woman, as if parched by the long joyless life; she can close her eyes only with an effort, by knitting her brow grooved with wrinkles. The sense of overall harmony is coupled with that special neatness which naturally embraces both moral and spiritual purity.

Madonna of Solyanka. 1990s

It is here that photography penetrates into art with its cohesive, integral, lucid imagery. The moment was captured—either by a precisely targeted lens or in motion—and the completeness of the message is such that I want to stick to what is already found and to guard it from other connotations. An image of love is bestowed on us, the full circle of life, generation, and family, a witness of the past and a glance into the future. The tragic side of life cast no shadow on them, no one hears the tocsin of foreboding, and yet, when looking at this peaceful mundane scene, we cannot be sure that they are protected from the shifts and changes of life, that they need no compassion or sympathy. The degree of psychological completeness and the vividness of their existence make us involved in their life. This could only be achieved by art, while simple illustrations or comments would be powerless.

Among the best works by Mikhail Dashevsky I would mention On the Uptown Platform Near Moscow (1968), Pechory Monastery (1977) with a twosome representing the eternal chaos of the Russian province—not only of the monastic one, but on a larger scale—the province with its need, despair, desire to live and be oneself; a portrait of a craftsman from Tver—Uncle Kolya (1978); a vibrant image taken at a deserted Cheboksary market in 1972—Felt Boots.

In the best of his works, Dashevsky’s relation to art rather than to craft is expressed in the constant quest for the picture’s poetic nature, which I would call a latent “chord.” He looks for the secret in nature itself and shows it unsweetened.

The iconic Russian North is easily recognizable in the photograph taken near Arkhangelsk in 1970. The horizon runs beyond the frame, the land first seems desolate, three horses came to water and hold a silent yet obvious conversation, three boats at the bank resonate with each other, the boats that were not intentionally set there, at three fishing huts, for beauty and harmony, but have belonged to owners of the huts, their labor, life, and scanty possessions since the dawn of time. Despite the stillness and peace, it is not a life free from worries and sorrows; asceticism is in every detail, and the quiet dialog of the animate with the inanimate never stops in expectation of the Man who might come and answer the impatient question of the wheeler.

Art lives here for at least one thing: the author himself couldn’t express in words the ups and downs of life captured by the camera. We could philosophize about the barrenness and misery of this forlorn shallow bank, link the reproachful accusations with important social issues, and go deep into the thicket of political speculations.

This would only steer us away from the eternity inherent in nature and its savagery, while here we already have a picturesque metaphor of nature, an image of its grandeur with no tricks or clowning, grandeur hidden deep inside, as nature itself bequeathed to us.

If Dashevsky was asked the question from La Dolce Vita—“Are you a photographer?”—the answer would be “no.” Because he is a famous engineer, a scientist. Photography is not what he does for a living, but his hobby, a costly one. And yet, it is his true passion.

I would add that photography is his vocation revealing those of his qualities that might remain unnoticed behind his witty skepticism—a delicate soul and fraternal commitment to people.

Moscow, 1994

Room in Communal Apartment. 1960s