Photography Week at the HSE Art and Design School: From Documentary to Fashion Photography
Photography Week took place on November 20–25 at the HSE Art and Design School. As part of the festival, the HSE ART GALLERY presented works by students of the Photography track from recent years, while CREATIVE HUB hosted a conference titled ‘Photography: More than Art.’
Throughout the week, the HSE Art and Design School held open events—exhibitions of students and teachers’ works, a photo book evening, a curatorial excursion, and a large photography conference at CREATIVE HUB, where speakers told listeners about the function and diversity of photography practices in the modern world.
‘Since CREATIVE HUB works with creative industries, we hold conferences in all 15 areas. Photography is popular, in-demand, and presented very widely within the festival, and we see both public interest and great speakers,’ comments Elena Ermakovishna, curator of HSE CREATIVE HUB.
In addition, experts talked about different types of photography, from documentary and conceptual to event and fashion photography. There was also a workshop on an early analogue process—cyanotype—from the PhotoSecession laboratory. The conference ended with a panel discussion about the photography market, with the participation of gallerists from PENNLAB Gallery, Sample, FotoDepartament.Gallery, and Grinberg (ex. Fotografer.RU).
Oleg Tserbaev, teacher of the Modern Photography Technologies course at the HSE Art and Design School, spoke in detail about how neural networks interact with photos. ‘Working with AI is similar to making a film because it is detailed and strategic: you must clearly understand what will be in the picture, what kinds of angles and shots there are, what colour will be used,’ he explained.
Igor Mukhin, curator of the Photography in the City track at the HSE Art and Design School, spoke about his work. ‘Teaching at such a university is the most interesting journey— it involves searching for current topics in the city, creative solutions to the subject, and dialogue with students,’ he shared.
Alexandra Lekomtseva, General Director of the Blazar fair and Co-Founder of the Sample gallery, is confident that there is a photography market in Russia; it is smaller than the market for contemporary art in the medium of painting, graphics, and sculpture, but it is stable. ‘Photography certainly has a potential to grow in the art market, and it would be great if it is developed by professionals from this field, specialised galleries, for example,’ says Alexandra Lekomtseva. ‘It would be perfect if we had our own photography fair.’
Vladislav Efimov, teacher of the Photography and Contemporary Art tracks at the HSE Art and Design School, told the guests about constructing an artistic image. ‘This is a fairly relevant problem because if we talk about photography as a field of art, then, figuratively speaking, we are dealing with a medium that is very old, so it has accumulated some problems, including problems in relation to the general field of artistry. The general field of artistry presupposes many details that are difficult to convey in photography: a collective image, the author’s showing of their inner world, entering into a relationship with sound and abstraction, etc. And I argued for the need to construct an artistic image because it does not have to be indistinct,’ shared Vladislav Efimov.
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