Urban treasures photography

ИЗМАЙЛОВО [IT’S MY LOVER]

ИЗМАЙЛОВО [IT’S MY LOVER] This book is a result of the ‘Urban treasures: Photography’ workshop organized by Strelka Institute for media architecture and design and held by Charlie Koolhaas in Moscow from July 2-8, 2014.

Moscow, 2014

Urban treasures: Photography

The modern city and its infrastructure challenge the researcher with a difficult task of seeing the most important things and regularities in the course of urban routines and an endless flow of manifold information.

In the workshop ‘Urban treasures: photography’ organized by Strelka Institute and held by Charlie Koolhaas participants were able to see a city the way it really is, how to scrutinize its infrastructure, its demands, the life of city dwellers its paradoxes and how to bring the conclusions made in the course of the analysis to public attention. Participants held a photographic research session in Izmailovo, one of Moscow’s paradoxical and at the same time rather typical districts, and viewed a presentation of the photographic stories album based on the results of the seven-day workshop.

Introduction

Throughout a week we explored the most of Izmailovo district that resembles a kind of an urban island — with its own boundaries, rules and aesthetics. Every day we found something original that helped us to experience the place and look at it from an unexpected angle.

Started as photographers, we evolved into hunters and spies, focusing on completely different matters from the smallest decorative details up to the local lifestyles.

At the first glance seeming so differdent, the territories began to interact as we started to look not only from the outside but the inside as well. People in the market and in the park, hotel interiors and souvenirs, wedding cars, cheap background for memorable pictures, and many other distinctions were built into series to unfold the life of Izmailovo in front of us.

The images that you will find are not simply illustration to describe the reality.

This is an attempt to analyze the place with the help of visual tools. Working in a group, we discussed an endless amount

of pictures we took and detected internal links and deep semantic lines within the groups of images.

The book has turned out to reflect the synthesis of different perspectives. You can take a look at Izmailovo with our eyes, and what is more important — you may come across with something new about the area, something you took no notice of before. Who knows, maybe you might want to conduct your own investigations, to grab your camera and pay a visit to this strange and contradictory place.

And, of course, we can not help saying that all of this would have not taken place, if it were not Charlie and Joyce — they directed us and inspired us to think, to not dwell on the obvious but to go deeper into the images, effects and meanings. Many thanks to them!

Измайлово. It’s my lover!

Team

Participants of the ‘Urban Treasures: Photography’ workshop: Daria Baturina Valeriy Belobeev Ivan Erofeev Denis Da-Qi Fedoseev Daria Gavilova Egor Isaev Svetlana Ivanushkina Svetlana Kondratieva Maria Koroleva Iana Kozak Alyona Lozovskaya Gennady Martynov Sabina Maslova Nicholas Moore Polina Nochka Anna Shamshonkova Anton Silenin Ekaterina Vasilieva Workshop leader: Charlie Koolhaas Workshop assistant: Joyce Caboor

Here was written ‘here is Russian genius, here is Russian spirit’. I’ll never sell anything to a jerk. These matryoshka dolls are all live for me. Not long ago OMON (Special Police Force) nailed down a whole group of people. They were selling weapons unduly. I know nothing about the immigrants, they just live in here. It’s my first time in Moscow, I like the city a lot. I enjoy working here, there are so many different cultures, you get to know new people and everyone is getting along with each other really well. Are you a Christian?

Do you see the icons, they were brough from Egypt. Wanna buy? Here is an Ikon of the St. Nikita the exorcist. Demons are everywhere. Ocasionally people come here from different cities – Voronege, Novgorod, Archangelsk. They arrive late on Friday, sleep in cars, then at 6 in the morning a huge croud of people appears with flashlights to pick the goods in the dark outrunning the others, so that in two hours they can sell it 10-15 times more expensive, sometimes even on the same market. I haven’t sold any picture in two years. Here on flea market we all know each other, trust each other. I can borrow any money from anyone, no one’ll say no. People who work on the everyday part of the market are just hagglers. Im the president of the bad boys.

Strelka Summer Programme 2014