When entering the room to view Four Perspectives Through the Lens: Soviet Art Photography in the 1970s-80s you quickly start pairing the images with another exhibit on view, Seva's Blue Horizon: The Poet Seva Nekrasov and Artists of Unoffical Moscow, because they are placed so closely together. Both bodies of work are coming from Russian photographers, and although they are seperate exhibits, I find their differences to American/ European photography very interesting. Although I do not know very much about Soviet art photography, I can understand through the images that either they were distanced from the rest of the art world or they flat-out ignored it. Erik Bulatov's photograph named "Poet Vsevolod Nekrosov" is hand colored, which seems to be a shunned technique in the rest of the world, from the complete lack of images utilizing this technique. Other images featured are purposefully crumpled for the aesthetic which are in contrast to another photographer whom does seem to have similar aesthetic to American/ European documentary photographers.
Seva's Blue Horizon, similarly, shows the play and experimentation in Russian photography. Seva Nekrasov's images show an eye for geometry and angles. One image, Interior, shows a selected piece of a window displaying strong lines which turn the window into nothing more than rectangles. Nekrasov's play with perspective reminds me of some of Alexander Rodchenko's images with strong, awkward angles.
The Zimmerli exhibit, to me, seemed to really show Russian photography's strength in originality. The exhibit layed out a variety of techniques and photographers all working in the same grouping but with radically different ideas on how an image could look, perhaps ignoring how an image SHOULD look.
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good start, but could be longer
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