Alexey (Aleksey, Alexis, Alexei) Viktorovich Titarenko (born November 25, 1962; Russian: Алексей Викторович Титаренко) is a Soviet Union-born American photographer and artist. He lives and works in
New York City.[1][2][3]
Biography
Titarenko was born in
Leningrad,
USSR, now
Saint Petersburg, Russia. His mother survived the
Siege of Leningrad and later became a
mathematician.
His father was born at the
Gulag camp
Karlag in
Kazakhstan, near
Karaganda where his parents were deported to by
bolsheviks from
Ukraine during
collectivization. He later became a
coal mining engineer in his home town Karaganda, Kazakhstan. They met each other as students of
Leningrad University.[4][5] At age 15, Alexey Titarenko became the youngest member of the independent photo club Zerkalo (Mirror).[6] He went on to graduate with honors from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad's Institute of Culture.[7][8]
Influenced by the
Russian avant-garde works of
Kazimir Malevich,
Alexander Rodchenko and the
Dada art movement (from the early 20th century), his series of
collages and
photomontages, created by superposing several negatives, Nomenklatura of Signs (first exhibited in 1988, in Leningrad, and later same year, in Drouart gallery, Paris, France) is a commentary on the Communist regime as an oppressive system that converts citizens into mere signs.[9][10][11][12] In 1989, Nomenklatura of Signs was included in Photostroika, a major show of new Soviet photography that toured the US.[13][14]
During and after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991–1992, he produced several series of photographs about the
human condition of ordinary people living on its territory and the suffering they endured then and throughout the twentieth century. To illustrate links between the present and the past, he created
metaphors by introducing
long exposure and
intentional camera movement into
street photography.[15][16][17] Sources have noted that his most important innovation is the way he uses long exposure.[18][19][20][21]John Bailey, in his essay about
Garry Winogrand and Titarenko, mentioned that one of the obstacles that he surmounted successfully was being too visible himself and, as a consequence, people's possible reaction to his presence altering the authenticity of the image.[22][23][24]
Titarenko's best-known series from this period is City of Shadows (which is also a title of his autobiographical novel),[25] whose urban landscapes reiterate the
Odesa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or
Potemkin Stairs) scene from
Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin.[26] Inspired by the music of
Dmitri Shostakovich and the novels of
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Titarenko also translated Dostoevsky's vision of the
Russian soul into sometimes poetic, sometimes dramatic pictures of his native city,
Saint Petersburg. Intitled "Les Quatres Mouvements de Saint Petersbourg" by French art historian, writer and curator Gabriel Bauret, these photographs were exhibited, as Titarenko's solo show curated by Gabriel Bauret, at the
Rencontres d'Arles 2002 in
Reattu Museum (
Arles, France).[19][27][28][29]
Along with
Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film Russian Ark, the City of Shadows exhibition (which now included photographs from the mid and late 1990s inspired by Dostoevsky's novels) was a part of the program celebrating the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg at the 2003 Clifford Symposium, in Middlebury, VT: What Became of Peter's Dream? Petersburg in History and Arts[30]The Russian Ark and the City of Shadows have one similarity: both are based on the experimental innovation: Alexander Sokurov using a single, very long – 96 minutes
sequence shot and Titarenko's several minutes long exposure for some of his photographs.[31][32]
In his photographs from
Venice, mostly taken between 2001 and 2008, Titarenko uses "... a highly stylized technic that he put deftly in a service of strongly determined vision."[8] Moreover, "Venice also offers him a reminiscence of Saint Petersburg, similar to a recollection found in the work of Marcel Proust, who, in
Albertine disparue (The Fugitive), recounts during his Venetian sojourn that he cannot resist comparisons to
Combray."[33] Venice, Italy creates a counterbalance, a point of comparison with
Venice of the North where he was born -
Saint Petersburg.[34][35] In Titarenko's photographs, like in Proust's writings, " ... what matters is less the scrupulous description of reality than a particular vision it renders."[33]
Titarenko creates his prints in a
darkroom. Critics have called him a master of the darkroom technique.[16][36][1] Selective bleaching and
toning (often done by brush) add depth to his palette of grays. Like
Man Ray and
Maurice Tabard, Titarenko uses so-called
pseudo-solarization, but unlike his predecessors, he exposes the print to light during the
developing process mostly at the edges and in a subtle way that lowers the contrast and creates a very particular kind of gray silver 'veil'. In order to emphasize the dramatic aspects of the City of Shadows series, he sometimes combines the
Sabattier effect with adjacency effect created during development, called the
Mackie line.[37]
Through interviews, lectures, books, curated exhibitions and two documentaries by French-German TV channel
Arte (2004, 2005), Titarenko describes a particular vision of an artist and of Art, close to that of
Marcel Proust, linked to literature, poetry and classical music (especially that of
Dmitri Shostakovich), placing himself far apart from contemporary tendencies developing particularly in Moscow.[38]
A 2011 exhibition of 15 gelatin silver prints from his Havana, Cuba series (2003-2006) in the
J. Paul Getty Museum group show, A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, linked Titarenko's approach to street photography in contemporary Havana to that of
Walker Evans in 1933, by the subjects he photographed and aspects of his printing.[39][40][41]
Titarenko became a naturalized United States citizen in 2011; and lives and works in New York City as an artist, photographer, and printer.[1][42][43]
His work in New York continues today. "Using
long exposure and darkroom technique, his goal is still to create a print that expresses his experience when creating the image ... paint with symbols, lifting them to the surface from the murk of reality. It should not be surprising, then, that Titarenko's vision of New York resonates with the work of
Alvin Langdon Coburn and
Alfred Stieglitz - men who strived to embody the dynamism of the city and its people in photographs at the turn of the twentieth century. As Titarenko's relationship with New York grows and changes, so too will the photographs he creates. It is the nature of his working methods."[16][2]
Publications
Publications by Titarenko
The Photographs from the Cycle Black and White Magic of St. Petersburg. Soros Center for Contemporary Art / Open Society Institute, St Petersburg, 1997. With an essay in Russian and English by Georgy Golenky, Senior Research Curator at the Russian State Museum, St.Peterburg.[n 1]
Alexei Titarenko. Toulouse, France: Galerie Municipale de Château d'Eau, 2000.
ISBN2-913241-20-4.
City of Shadows. Saint Petersburg, Russia: Art-Tema, 2001.
ISBN5-94258-005-7.
Alexey Titarenko, Photographs. Washington D.C.: Nailya Alexander, 2003.
ISBN0-9743991-0-8.
Experiences photographiques russes, Month of Photography in Paris 1992, Grand Ecran, Paris, France. Titarenko contributed photographs from his Nomenklatura of signs series to this exhibition.[44][45]
Alexey Titarenko, City of Shadows, July–August 2001, Apex Fine Art, Absolut L.A. International Biennal, Los Angeles, USA.[46]
Alexey Titarenko, les quatre mouvements de Saint-Petersbourg, July–September 2002,
Musée Réattu,
Rencontres d'Arles festival, Arles, France.[47]
Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements,Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February–April 2010.[48]
A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, May–October 2011
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Titarenko contributed photographs from Cuba to this group exhibition on the island.[39]
Italia Inside Out. I Grandi Fotografi E L'Italia, November 2015 - February 2016,
Palazzo della Ragione, Milan, Italy. Titarenko contributed photographs from Venice to this group exhibition about Italy.[49]
Le Journal de la Culture series on
Arte aired a 7-minute episode on Titarenko in 2004.[66]
Alexey Titarenko: Art et la Maniere (2005). 30 minutes. Directed by Rebecca Houzel. Produced by Image & Co. for Arte.[67]
References
^
abcRobertson, Rebecca "Bringing Shadows to Life. Alexey Titarenko" Art News, New York City, June 2014, page 54-57
^
abCorcoran, Sean, Museum of the City of New York "The City at the Edge of the New World"; in Titarenko, The City is a Novel, Damiani, 2015, pages 162-163,
ISBN978-88-6208-414-7
^Ksenia Nuril. "Spheres of influence" pages 17-24 from "Nomenklatura of Signs" Bologna, Italy: Damiani, 2020. ISBN 978-88-6208-699-8.
^City of Shadows" in The City is a Novel / Alexey Titarenko, Damiani, 2015, pages 15-36,
ISBN978-88-6208-414-7
^ZERKALO: Forever After, The State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO, St.Petersburg, Russia, 2017, page 17, 38, 41, 42, 124-127, 271, 272, 292, 322
ISBN978-5-91238-026-6
^Schwendener, Martha "A city's artistic rebellion. Photographs and other works that pushed boundaries in late-cold-war Leningrad." The New York Times, June 2, 2013
^"Underground Russian photography 1970s–1980s" The New Yorker, March 19, 2012
^Meyers, William. "Shades of Reality. Underground Russian photography in 1970s–1980s" The Wall Street Journal March 10–11, 2012
^Sartorti, Rosalinde (1989). "No more heroic tractors: Subverting the legacy of socialist realism." Pp 8–17 of Richardson, Nan; Hagen Charles (1989). Photostroika: New Soviet Photography. Aperture 116. New York: Aperture Foundation.
ISBN0-89381-410-5.
LCCN58-30845
^Gabriel Bauret "Fragments of the discourse on a photographic oeuvre" Alexey Titarenko photographs / Gabriel Bauret essay, Nailya Alexander, Washington D.C. 2003, pages 20, 26, 30, 34, 40, 42.
ISBN0-9743991-0-8
^Pollack, Barbara. "Alexey Titarenko." Art News, April 2010, page 108
^
abA.-D. Bouzet. "Saint Petersburg en Ombre et Blanc." Libération, Paris, July 21, 2002
^The Elements of Photography. Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images. Oxford,
Elsevier, 2008, page 200-205,
ISBN978-0-240-80942-7
^Tim Smith "Black, White, Grey Titarenko's photos in new exhibit are eerily timeless and bleak" The Baltimore Sun, June 1, 2012
^Henri Cartier-Bresson e gli altri. I Grandi Fotografi E L'Italia, A cura di Giovanna Calvenzi, Contrasto, Milan, Italy, 2015, pages 115-123,
ISBN978-88-09-82779-0
^Newspaper Kommersant n 173, page 8, September 29, 2020.