Remarkable images of St Petersburg by Alexey Titarenko
Written by John MacphersonCNN have a remarkable portfolio of images by Alexey Titarenko entitled ‘City of Shadows – Soviet era’s ghostly dusk’. Well worth your time looking.
Image © Alexey Titarenko
Quote from Alexey Titarenko:
“I saw people on the verge of insanity, in confusion: unattractively dressed men and women with eyes full of sorrow and desperation, tottering on their routine dreary routes with their last ounce of strength, in search of some food which could prolong their lives and the lives of their families. They looked like shadows, undernourished and worn out. My impressions as well as my emotional state were enormously powerful and long lasting.
“I felt an intense desire to articulate these sufferings and grieving, to visualize them through my photographs, to awaken empathy and love for my native city’s inhabitants.
“More than anything, I wanted to convey my ‘people-shadows’ metaphor as accurately as possible. This metaphor became the core of both my new vision and new series. I placed my Hasselblad camera near the entrance to the Vasileostrovskaya subway station, where the shopping district was located. It was a place where time had come to a standstill. This perception of time stopped convinced me that it could also be stopped by means of a camera shutter using ‘long exposure.’ A crowd of people flowing near the subway station formed a sort of human sea, providing me with a feeling of nonreality, a phantasmagoria; these people were like shadows from the underworld?.
Author — John Macpherson
John MacPherson was born and lives in the Scottish Highlands. He trained as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards, before completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and then qualified as a Social Worker in Disability Services. Along the way he has cooked on canal barges, trained as an Alpine Ski Leader & worked as an Instructor for Skiers with disabilities, been a canoe instructor, and tutor of night classes in carpentry, stained glass design and manufacture, and archery. He has travelled extensively on various continents, undertaking solo trips by bicycle, or motorcycle. He has had narrow escapes from an ambush by terrorists, been hit by lightning, caught in an erupting volcano, trapped in a mobile home by a tornado, kidnapped by a dog's hairdresser, rammed by a basking shark and was once bitten by a wild otter. He has combined all this with professional photography, which he has practised for over 35 years. He teaches photography and acts as a photography guide & tutor in the UK and abroad. His biggest challenge is keeping his 30 year old Land Rover 110 on the road. He loves telling and hearing stories.
Discussion (2 Comments)
You can also find this work in the book, Street Photography Now, by Thames and Hudson.
Hi There Duckrabbit,
Thanks you for your post, I’m looking something subtle, dark, and psychological. Something that forces the ‘protagonist,’ for all intensive purposes, into a horrific or otherwise strange situation. Hellish hallucinations, ultimatums, insanity, isolation, paranoia… the list goes on. Subtlety is essential. There is nothing that can build more tension than a slow plot full of second-guesses, questions about reality and trust. Isolation is one of my favourite set-ups. Gore is fine in very small doses. Personally, I don’t care for it, but it is tantamount to an excellent plot, a try is in order. Suggestion is better than blatant presentation unless a truly remarkable image is given.
(like the movies “Solaris,” 1972, “2001: A Space Odyssey” 1968, or even as wild as “Eraserhead,” 1977, “Pandora,” or the manga, “Akira”).
… Did that come off as too pushy?
Nice One!