Magical realism of Sergey Chubarov

The Gallery of Classical Photography opened the exhibition of Sergey Chubarov “Holga”, which will be on display till February 20, 2022. The exhibition includes more than fifty pictures: atmospheric city and country scenes as well as ordinary photographs taken on black-and-white and color film with the Holga analog camera.

This cheap medium format camera has been produced since the early 1980s in China. It was originally intended for the poor and unpretentious citizens of the Middle Kingdom and Hong Kong. Later this plastic “camera for the people” gained a cult status and became popular with photographers for its artistic quality. The camera with soft focus and retro-style instagram distortions gives his pictures an “arty” aesthetic. Many of Chubarov’s color photographs refer to the picturesque “mood landscapes” of Camille Corot, a 19th century French artist. But unlike the famous master, the photographer strives to get such an image, which would be notable for its graphicism and harmony of forms.

The exhibition has already been visited by many professional photographers and art critics. This is what they say about what they saw:

Photographer Andrey Bataev met Sergey Chubarov in 2006 when he was just “starting to take pictures for the family album. He was fascinated by Sergei’s landscapes, which he called “pictures” at the time: “I watched the development and experimentation of Sergei’s photographic work from 2006 to 2019. Sergey slowly but surely moved from classic landscapes and genre photos to those “seven steps beyond the horizon”. Beyond the horizon of narration and subject matter, which he called “literature,” toward the pure picture without a title or common “meaning. “Holga” with its otherworldly color and murky focus helped him tremendously. But it was also, in Sergei’s words, only a ‘tool,’ not an end in itself.

According to Anton Tereschenko, photographer and friend of Sergei Chubarov: “In pictures of Sergei it is possible to admire the beauty of nature or the situation, very subtly felt by him, the elegance of forms, plasticity of the image, invented history or a reference to the cultural heritage. There’s no contrivance in them. One never tires of his work, it’s as if it adapts to the viewer and his mood. You Believe Them.”.

Photographer Alexander Gurov praised Sergey Chubarov’s landscape photographs at the exhibition: “It is perhaps more difficult to shoot a landscape full of life than to find this life in other genres. A photographer is doomed to repeat already created clichés, and only an unconditional love for nature and a fine sense of form and color can change this situation. Then the viewer will not want to pass by his work without feeling any emotion, but to gaze and live among this beauty. I remember Sergey Chubarov as such a remarkable photographer”.

American photographer and art critic Mikhail Steinberg also thinks that landscape photography is one of the most difficult genres of art: “On the one hand it is the most accessible genre and that is why most people shoot it. But the more difficult it is to make a really good, interesting landscape photo, which, on the one hand, would be beautiful, and, on the other hand – did not roll into banality. I think Sergei was good at it. And this despite the fact that he shot a lot on “Holga”. And this is a very tricky camera! It’s very easy to fall under the spell of her super-contrast, plastic-lens distorted, coarse-grained picture. But Sergei shoots with the Holga just as he would with any other camera, not letting it overpower his creator’s will. I look at his work: two dogs in the snow, a cat, an island in the fog, children. In general, the usual subjects. But his photographs have Je ne sais quoi, something that is difficult to describe with words, and as soon as we look at them we know it’s real!”.

According to printmaker Valery Samarin, Chubarov explores the world around him using the technical imperfection of the Holga: “The basis of everything with Sergei is form, color and perspective, using which he gets fantastic pictures. With sharpness and color, Chubarov brings out the main compositional elements in the picture: it’s as if he is telling the viewer to look here! Here is the main theme of the visual symphony!”.

Photographer Anna Golubovskaya believes that the genre in which Sergey Chubarov worked can be classified as magical realism: “It happens very rarely when a photographer, who invented his world and populated it with characters, remains in a state of creator for many years. Sergey Chubarov’s world is a kind fairy tale, which is present near us, but you can only see it from a certain angle. Many photographers make attempts to create something similar, but most often they go beyond the surreal or abstract. Sergey was just changing color umbrellas, like the fairy tale Ole-Lukoya, and “Holga” was his good helper. Thanks to her, he expanded our view of ordinary things, inviting us into a wonderful world where we want to return again and again.

Producer and photographer Andrei Troitsky notes that for him personally, the photographer’s work carries something that he might call “the intrusion of time.” “It’s as if the same picture belongs both to the time in which it was taken and to a different, much earlier time. And he thinks that “Chubarov’s work could be called photographic impressionism.

Photographer Lidia Zhukovskaya highlights Sergey Chubarov’s photos “for the fact that they help us see the world as one wishes to live”. “I love them for the complexity behind the seeming simplicity, for the originality and creative diversity: when you look at them, it’s as if the world around you begins to shatter and simultaneously enlarges, becoming infinite,” she says.

Photographer Natalia Pustynnikova says about his friend and colleague: “Internet clubs in the early 2000s was a lively place, even exuberant. And in that tumultuous polyphony, Sergey had his own voice and, even more importantly, a sound that was sincere, soft but always right. His works have always been intonation-precise and addressed to every person. Whatever he shoots – people, landscapes, objects – everything speaks to the viewer, including him in the dialogue. That seems to me to be the main thing to strive for in photography.

For more information about the exhibition, visit the website of the Gallery of Classical Photography >