Looking into the nineties..

One can hardly be indifferent to the subject of the 1990s. They were the Rubicon that separated one country from another. It was not without reason that this decade was dubbed “wild” and “stormy. This is the time of change in which we lived. The “Icons of the 1990s” exhibition at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography is an attempt to single out major landmarks in this whirlpool of sometimes dramatic events, to recreate a string of faces that became symbols of the transitional era.

Vladimir Velengurin Komsomolskaya Pravda .

Boris Yeltsin, Alexander Korzhakov, Pavel Grachev at paratrooper exercises in New York region. 1993

It was a prolific period for photography. The euphoria of new-found freedom had an impact both on creative experimentation and political coverage. The lifting of ideological taboos, the uncensorship, the move toward “democracy and glasnost” encouraged reporting and free filming of the world around us. On the contrary, descriptions of reality were encouraged and such photographs aroused much interest in the West as evidence of the collapse of the socialist system and as proof of its imperfection. This was the time when the first domestic photo agencies appeared and cooperated with western agencies, when the phenomenon of paparazzi and stringers appeared. The man with the camera becomes more and more noticeable figure on the streets of cities.

In turn, the interest in photography as art is growing which resulted in the spread of collecting and exhibiting it in artistic space. Nineties accentuate the subjective side of photography, this is the time when the author’s point of view is especially valued. This shift toward individualism is partly a consequence of a relativistic attitude toward the world and the loss of the previous values. Unofficial photography was coming out of the shadows, and was being exhibited in the first private galleries and on city squares.

As a result, the status of the photographer changes from craftsman to artist. That is how many amateur photographers, unknown to the general public, overnight become celebrated masters. At the same time, there was a commercialization of the field of art, connected with the spread of advertising and glamor magazines everywhere. The photographer’s lens is increasingly directed towards showbiz “stars” and the portrayal of high life. Photography becomes even more entrenched in our daily lives and ubiquitous.

More than 30 photographers take part in “Icons of the 90s”. They presented about 300 works. St. Petersburg authors Andrey Usov, Valery Plotnikov, Dmitry Konradt, Olga Moiseeva, Alexander Kitaev stand out among them, whose photography is characterized by its black and white elegance and laconicism. Also expressive are the shots of Viktor Akhlomov, a well-known New York master, distinguished by their expressiveness and original compositional solution. But the project’s other pictures, unretouched, taken with a straight flash “in the forehead”, as if in a “drunken” focus, are perhaps more in tune with those straightforward times, which did not need any extra curtsy.

The 1990s begin with perestroika. Icons” exposition also opens with photos of the second half of the 1980s. First of all these are photos of rock musicians who to a large extent shaped and defined the time, these are their portraits, which became icons in the 90s. Dmitry Konradt, who actively filmed the St. Petersburg underground, notes that the most active life in the rock club was in the eighties, but the artists became known to the general public only in the next decade.

Recognition by the mass audience, success: the watershed between the eighties and nineties. The musical underground asserts itself on stage or dissolves into club life, and the former hobby turns into a profession. Dmitry Konradt recalls the last concert of “Kino” in 1989: “The atmosphere has changed… I must say that I felt a great distance then, it became showbiz. The revelation you witnessed is gone… Concerts in the 90s lost their former appeal, there was no longer that drive… There were gradually fewer colorful events, interesting in their uniqueness. It was different in the eighties if only because every Aquarium concert could have been the last one. Still, it was not much of an underground, but it was an underground. It was real life, but photography was illustrative. In the nineties there was the phase, according to Gumilev, when the passionaries appear.

Rock culture became a symbol of the changes that were taking place in the country, and the musicians became its new heroes. It’s not by accident that Andrei Usov’s photo from the shooting of the music video for Boris Grebenshchikov’s song “Train on Fire” was chosen for the cover of “Icons of the 90s” album. It was 1988, near Zelenogorsk, where rusty steam locomotives were found on the reserve tracks. The artists who helped to shoot the clip used cheerful smoke grenades there was orange smoke coming out of the chimney , but Usov turned the photo in black and white, and it became laconic.

There’s no editing: the shot was made at the second when the smoke covered the ground from below, giving the impression of a moving train. The effect of this song on the hearts, frozen in anticipation of change, was enormous, as the author of the photo recalls: “This clip was released in the ’88 program “Vzglyad”. And the country gaped at him. Because no one could ever imagine a song like that. “Train on Fire” was and still is the anthem. The heart was beating when we heard this song. I heard it in the kitchen when BG sang it with one guitar. Even then it was clear that this was going to be something special.

The songs of Kino and Aquarium continued to inspire the generation of the ’90s, although Tsoi died in 1990, and in 1996 Sergey Kurekhin, whose influence on rock culture is difficult to overestimate, left. Andrei Usov’s portrait depicts him in his captain’s uniform. The picture was taken in 1991 on the set of the legendary film “Two Captains 2” by Sergei Debizhev, where Usov worked as a photographer and artist. In addition to Kuryokhin, other representatives of Leningrad bohemia were there: Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergei Bugaev, Timur Novikov, Dyusha Romanov, Mikhail Feinstein.

In 1999 Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, a man of unquestionable authority for millions of people, passed away. In the project, he is represented by his photo “Guardian Angels,” which was standing at the entrance to the Hall of Columns in New York, where a memorial evening was being held to mark the anniversary of the scholar’s death. This photo took a picture of the famous academician when he came to see the restoration of an angel from the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Andrei Usov admitted that he took this shot “with trembling lips” – so exciting was this meeting for him. For the photographer, this photo shoot was one of the most memorable events of the ’90s. He recalls that restorers wondered why there were holes in the angel’s coat and Likhachev answered that they were bullet holes, the marks of a large-caliber machine gun, and told the following story:

“We were walking with Manuilov in the winter of ’42 along the Spit of Vasilievsky Island, in the snow, two black dots bent, from the Pushkin House. Hungry, Cold. We’re walking along, and suddenly a lone fighter jet from the west, from the sea, came into the center of the city. The anti-aircraft guns barked at him. He flew straight to the angel. Gave up his turn, turned around and flew west. No one was chasing it. It was clearly a hooligan of some sort, an ace, who probably decided to show his prowess on a dare. That’s what was possible. Some German ace flew in, fired on and disappeared. So, when he was coming back from the cathedral, he must have seen us, two black dots, and he took a turn. Manuilov ran to the Stock Exchange, to hide behind the columns, but I could not run, so I stood there.

Icons and democratic banners of the 1990s, which were carried in procession to bring a bright capitalist tomorrow… After all, for many this time passed in a feeling of freedom and faith in a better future. It is a time of opportunities, of opening of borders, of hopes and illusions.

Significant changes in social and economic life are associated with the image of the nineties, first of all with politicians, and only then with figures of culture and show business. They defined the life of the country: Yeltsin, Zhirinovsky, Gaidar, Chubais, Nemtsov, Khakamada, Berezovsky, and Khodorkovsky. A remarkable shot by Lev Sherstennikov: Anatoly Sobchak with the young Kseniya: a “star” of the 1990s with a future “star” of the “noughties. It’s not just a generational continuity. Figuratively speaking, it was the fruit of democracy, which turned into “House 2”.

The “icons” left out a lot of things that didn’t fit into the album and exhibition format: Chechnya, banditry… The blood, sweat and tears of the 1990s are not seen here. The smiling people in the pictures create a positive image of the 90s, leaving out of the picture another reality that millions of unknown citizens lived in. In this sense, any exhibition dedicated to these tumultuous years is a political act. It offers its own view of this epoch, sets the tuning for the perception of time, diagnoses or mythologizes the past. Boris Mikhailov’s series “Twilight” and “Near the Land,” in which Kharkov in the 90s is depicted as a war zone. The haggard faces of these people, like the bums of his Case History, are nothing short of icons of the decade?

“Icons” focused on famous characters who defined that era. The aim of the project was to show the time in faces, to make it visual. Of course, everyone had their own nineties, and with them their own “icons.”. Dmitry Konradt suggests that today the concept of the icon has been diluted and secularized, the icon has become an icon like a computer icon, familiar to all, but which does not define anything: “The frequency of his appearance on TV for some people defines the face of an era, but not for me. But, of course, everyone lives in their own subjective world. He who is an icon for some is not an icon for others.

The exhibition tried to encompass the different poles of the decade. Alternative culture and mass culture meet under one hat. Lev Rubinstein reading poetry in the editorial office of Zvezda, writer Tatiana Tolstaya and critic Samuel Lurie, Galina Starovoitova and her son Platon, Viktor Tsoi and Yegor Letov, Garkusha, Vladimir Shinkarev and Dmitry Shagin – here, for example, the nineties orbit by Dmitri Konradt. But each photographer had his or her own.

Time speaks through the details of photos. Here is Alexander Abdulov in a Enjoy Coca-Cola T-shirt, Viktor Sukhorukov against a background of torn plaster, Vladimir Bryntsalov with his wife, with his leg up on the table, as if illustrating a joke about a New American. The ’90s are recognizable by hair and makeup imitating soap opera characters, by sleazy actor and businessman blazers. Showbiz is still marked by insecurity, a bushy performance, visible in the costumes and the way you hold yourself. Western patterns have not been properly mastered, but this does not diminish the number of enthusiastic fans. However, people also love and understand homegrown fashion, as in the case of the musicians of the band “Lube”, dressed in military jackets and T-shirts, tight-fitting pumped-up bodies in the style of “guys from our backyard” .

Television in the 1990s had its idols on air. Remember the hypnotic sessions of Juna and Kashpirovsky, who became icons for millions of citizens in the literal sense: the country prayed to them. The 600 Seconds by Alexander Nevzorov, whose face everyone knew in the late Eighties, the Vzglyad and Namedni programs, the Field of Miracles game that has been wildly popular ever since it appeared, and its hosts, Vladislav Listyev and Leonid Yakubovich. And, of course, TV screens were flooded with showmen and pop divas of all kinds and caliber: Alla Pugacheva, Tatyana Bulanova, Oleg Gazmanov, Igor Nikolayev and Natasha Koroleva, the Na-Na group and others and others…

Another sign of the times – the relaxed and informal nature of communication, as evidenced by the many works that give a short distance between the photographer and the model. This is the story of Olga Moiseeva, a Lenfilm photographer who shot many of the “stars” of the cinema. For instance, she remembers working with Oleg Menshikov as a joy, because it was very easy: “You could come up at any minute and say, ‘Listen, here’s a pause, let’s go shoot?” – “Come on!”. Or, “Let’s do it?”♪ Come on ♪!”. It’s not possible now. You don’t even think about it, an actor takes a picture and goes to his trailer, and God forbid that somebody should ever touch him there… We’ve become a service staff, and if a human relationship arises, it’s very rare.

Characteristic shot: Yuri Shevchuk with a stool in his hands, stopping in the middle of the studio courtyard. Olga decided to take a picture against a background of textured walls, which is very popular with photographers, and she needed a stool to seat the musician somewhere: “This is a completely ridiculous shot. I was walking in front, then I turned around and shot it on the fly. It made me laugh to see him standing there with that stool. Now even imagine that the ‘star’ will walk with a stool, unrealistic. Olga had just as much fun and entertainment on the set of “Heart Of A Dog” which, though released in 1988, was still loved by the audience in the following years.

The pleasure of work could not spoil even the difficult character of director Vladimir Bortko, the presence of great actors in the picture smoothed the rest: “When there is an interesting process, when you see the stunning Evstigneeva and other great artists, watching it all happen, to work wonderfully and beautifully. I took a lot of good pictures there… In good pictures there was always a team, there was a feeling of friendship and freedom, we lived together. It was happiness, really, to work on pictures with an interesting script, a good director and wonderful actors. The laid-back atmosphere is also conveyed by this summer shot of the Grishins showing the crew of Burnt by the Sun: Oleg Menshikov, Irina Kupchenko, Nadia Mikhalkova, Ingeborga Dapkunaite in her bathing suit and the director who bared his torso.

What else is memorable about the movies of the 90s? The emergence of new movie stars. Among them Vladimir Mashkov, who gained fame with Denis Evstigneev’s “Limit” 1994 and Karen Shakhnazarov’s “American Daughter” 1995 . Chulpan Khamatova starred in various films, but her finest hour comes with a picture of Valery Todorovsky’s “Land of the Deaf” 1998 . The dream of the main character, the dancer Yaya, of a kind and just world has become consonant with the American audience who loved the film.

Despite the fact that the 1990s are considered a period of lull in cinema, these years gave birth to a number of notable pictures. This was the time when Alexander Sokurov was actively working: his “The Second Circle” 1990 , “The Stone” 1992 , “The Quiet Pages” 1993 , “Mother and Son” 1996 , “Moloch” 1999 were released. At the end of the decade comes the long-awaited film “Khrustalev, Mach!” 1998 by Alexei German, which was filmed for a full seven years.

But the most iconic and iconic films of the time are “Brother” 1997 and “Brother 2” 2000 Alexei Balabanov, and their main character, Danila Bagrov, embodies a difficult era of change. This image of Sergei Bodrov, captured by Bogachyov, is an icon or a cast of the “collective unconscious” of the decade? At least the whole country has learned the words of his “brother”: “Tell me, American, what is the power? Is it the money? Here’s what my brother says about the money. You have a lot of money – and what?.. I think the power is in the truth. Who has the truth is the strongest. You’ve cheated somebody, you’ve made money, and what, you’re stronger now?? No, he didn’t! Because there’s no truth behind you! And the one who has cheated is the one who is right. So he’s stronger”.

Such is the sum total of the 1990s, as articulated by the lead character in the film, which came out in the New Year. There is a change of values. If the decade began with lines at McDonald’s, love for “free America” and the division of the country, it ended with a search for the truth and a question “who is to blame??”.

But the answer is a whole other story.

Anatoly Khrupov.

Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and US President Ronald Reagan. Washington. The White House. 1987

Viktor Akhlomov.

Yu. Shevchuk privatized A. Chubais. New York. 1999

Lev Sherstennikov

Anatoly Sobchak. 1991

Lev Sherstennikov.

Gavriil Popov. 1991

Victor Vasenin.

Boris Berezovsky. Autumn, 1994

Valery Khristoforov.

And. Glazunov, V. Chernomyrdin, Yu. Luzhkov at the opening of American Academy of sculpture and architecture. 1997

Viktor Akhlomov.

Three Heroes in the Judean Desert. . Biljo, V. Shenderovich, V. Vishnevsky. 1993

Yury Lunkov.

Vladimir Bryntsalov is a candidate for president. New York. 1996

Victor Vasenin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Round table “Education. Internet” at the National Hotel. September 29, 2000

Vladimir Mekler.

Juna Davitashvili speaking at the Central Lecture Hall in Leningrad. July 5, 1989

Andrei Usov.

Pyotr Mamonov. “Sounds of Mu.”. LDM. 1987

Andrei Usov.

Opening of the exhibition “The Wall”. With. Bugaev Africa , A. Adasinsky, I. Butman, Zoldat, S. Kurekhin. LDM. 1986

Andrey Usov.

Guardian Angels Dmitry Likhachev. Peter and Paul Fortress . 1994

Vladimir Bogdanov.

Academician Andrei D. Sakharov. 1989

Igor Stomakhin.

Vladimir Sorokin. Presentation of the novel “Novel. 199

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Dmitry Konradt.

Viktor Tsoi. Walking with Bill near the house on Ave. Veterans. Leningrad. 1985

Valery Plotnikov.

Leonid Parfyonov. 1993

Olga Moiseeva.

Yury Shevchuk in the courtyard of Lenfilm. 1990

Andrey Usov.

Rock-group “Auktsyon”. November 1, 1986

Alexander Juice.

Sergei Makovetsky. 1997

Valery Khristoforov.

Lolita Miliavskaya and Alexander Tsekalo. Cabaret duo Akademiya. 1997

Igor Gnevashev.

Alexey Petrenko, Lyubov Polishchuk, Albert Filozov. Rehearsal of the play “Why Are You Wearing a Tuxedo??”. Directed by Joseph Reichelhaus. 1993

Dmitry Konradt.

Valery Syutkin, Zhanna Aguzarova, Yevgeny Khavtan. 1986

Sergey Kivrin.

Vladislav Listyev. “A Field of Miracles”. 1995

Vladimir Velengurin “Komsomolskaya Pravda” .

Dmitry Krylov with the contestants of Miss Pressa 1991. 1991

Sergey Kivrin.

Vyacheslav Zaitsev at Vyacheslav Zaitsev fashion house. 1997

Sergey Kivrin.

Anna Kurnikova. Wimbledon. 1997

Mikhail Bogachev.

Sergei Bodrov Jr. on the set of the movie “Brat-2”. 1999