Publisher: La Lettre de la Photographie
The “Saint Petersbourg School of Photography” gathers a group of artists closely related to the “New Academism” trend, the main art movement of the post Perestroika Era. Around the figure of Timour Novikov, this group of “non conformist” artists (in contrast to the official soviet artists) has deeply marked the art scene far beyond the limits of the old Russian capital.
The referred “academism” must be understood in a second degree. This style is impregnated with the neo-classic architectural style of Prussian obedience, ubiquitous around the city. New academism, however, is a virulent critic of conformism that most of the soviet artists were subject to.
If there is an academism in these photos and in these scene, then it is an academism that echoes to the one of a decadent Rome’s Nero. Saint Petersburg in the 1990’s and at the beginning of the 2000’s evolved in debauchery, and an unprecedented amount of chaos and violence that only the fall of an empire can cause.
The featured photographs in Moscow methodically explore (sometimes in an allegoric or oblique way) the taboos that have just been shattered.