August 18th
VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present Shadows of the Dream a solo exhibition of the handmade silver gelatin prints by conceptual artist photographer, Misha Gordin.
Misha Gordin introduces the visitor to his website with a poem,
I Remember:
I remember life after the war.
Hiding in the ruins of bombed buildings.
The man with no legs pushing his way on a tiny platform.
I remember playing alone.
We did not have any toys.
I remember the stale smell of dark corridors.
I remember the forest full of secrets.
I remember faces that never smiled. |
Misha’s childhood recollections are of moving back home to war-ravaged
Riga, Latvia at the end of World War II. The Soviets occupied Latvia at
the war’s end. Throughout his stay in Riga, Misha lived amongst the
Russian-speaking population. This experience as a young person proved to
be formative. He was graduated from technical school as an aviation
engineer although he never practiced that profession. Rather, he joined
the Riga Motion Film Studios as an engineer designing equipment for
special effects.
Misha had no formal education in Western art.
And, throughout his time in Riga, Social Realism was the “official” and
dominant artistic style throughout Communist Europe. More often than
not, Social Realism was used for Soviet propaganda, a “move away from
(Western) decadent bourgeois art”.
Gordin began his
photographic career at the age of 16. He recalls being moved by a desire
to create his own personal style, so as to realize his voice. His early
work was portraiture and some documentary photographs. It proved
unsatisfactory. He took time off away from photography and concentrated
on reading (Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov) and in examining the
cinematography of Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov. Misha used
this period to explore ways to express his personal feelings through the
photographic medium.
It came to him a year later, “clearly and
simply”. Misha decided to photograph a “concept”, an idea, rather than
trying to “capture a decisive moment” in a portrait, landscape, or
documentary scene. He looked to create and photograph a decisive
intuitive vision. In 1972 he imagined and visualized an image. He then
staged it; photographed it; and, in the darkroom manipulated the
projected image that appeared on his easel to achieve his concept in a
print; thus, creating a conceptual photograph. This first print was
entitled
Confession. The black and white print presents a
bleak, barren landscape with a dark, moody and windy sky. Two naked
figures, a man and a woman, face one another. The man, apparently on his
knees, beats a bass drum while the woman has a wheelbarrow full of
dismembered doll body parts. The viewer is meant to discern the meaning
of this image through introspection.
Confession
13.5x17" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 15
|
Confession
is an image within the body of work “Shadows of the Dream”. Misha
Gordin pointed his camera “inward, toward my soul”, so as to listen to
his own inner voice. He thus transformed his idea into reality in the
form of a photographic print. An altered reality is the essence of
conceptual photography. Misha describes it this way: “For the last 40
years I have been involved in conceptual photography, where the idea or
vision is transformed by the camera into an image, connected to reality
only by my imagination.”
Misha eschews talking about the technical aspects of his work. “It diminishes the power of the image.” Nevertheless, it is
all
done in a conventional darkroom with a single enlarger. Gordin does not
manipulate his images digitally. Misha sketches his ideas before he
begins to photograph. He started this process long before the era of
computer manipulated imagery. However, he will tell you: “My technique
is unforgiving and laborious. Mistakes can be made, but not corrected. A
trace of fear of making a mistake is present in every single image I
make, as is the precision of every move and the complete concentration
necessary for my repetitive steps.”1 His time, both in his studio and in
the darkroom, is measured by weeks rather than hours. Gordin spends
time making multiple negatives and using as many as 100 negatives before
the final print is made. He has, over the many years, developed a very
sophisticated masking technique. “In a darkroom, I don’t see the
darkness. I see the excitement of a room filled with expectations. After
working on a print for many long days, I immerse the silver paper into
the warm chemicals and with the palms of my hands gently push it under
the surface. The timer counts the seconds. The image slowly reveals
itself with glowing brilliance.”
He concludes: “In all my years
of creating conceptual images, I have tried to make them as realistic
as possible. The plausibility of my scenes is not the most important
part; they function in such a way that the question “Is it real?” does
not arise. The authenticity that I present is that of an interior
moment, so that my viewers may trust and react to the conceptual truths
that they may know to be external fictions. I don’t interpret my images.
I feel them. Nevertheless, I always encourage my viewers to interpret
my work as they see or feel it. My goal is to create an image that
talks.....”, that speaks to the viewer. Thus, the viewer is left to
experience, to see, and to feel the emotional resonance created by Misha
Gordin’s visual metaphor in countless unique ways. It is as if one were
suspended in a black and white dream staring inward and seeing the
world in its most essential elements.
In 1974, Misha left Latvia and immigrated to the United States.
Crowd 8
15x19" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 7
|
The images in this exhibition at VERVE Gallery are all silver gelatin
prints assembled in a traditional darkroom from a multitude of original
negatives. The show images come from four bodies of work, “Shadows of
the Dream”, “Tomas”, “Crowd”, and “New Crowd”. While the print edition
numbers were larger in numbers in “Shadows.....”, the prints of all
later work are in limited editions, seven (7) numbered prints and three
(3) Artist Proofs of each image.
In his earliest body of work,
“Shadows of the Dream”, each image is titled. The focus for the viewer
is usually one or two human figures at some task. In Renunciation a male
nude figure is seen bathing in the ocean, washing his face, in the
vanishing light of dusk. On the desolate beach are six burlap bags. Two
of the bags are partially open suggesting that the contents of all the
bags are white mime-like masks. The masks appear to be the bather’s sole
article of clothing. The symbolism is poignant. As is the case with all
of Misha Gordin’s images, they are surreal and profoundly existential.
It is for the viewer to discover the significance of this image. Is the
bather a buffoon, a jester, a fool, a mime, a droll, a humorist, a boor,
a yahoo, a galoot, a wit, a comic,...? And, more importantly, who
embodies the bather? Is it, perhaps...?
Renunciation, 1978
14x18" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 50
|
As Misha Gordin perfected his masking techniques in the darkroom, his
images became increasingly more complex. In the “Crowd” series no image
has a specific title. Instead they are all generically named “Crowd”
followed by a number. Without a title the viewer has no hint of the
print’s possible meaning(s). These newer photographs contain twenty or
more persons. Some images are graphically compelling and beautiful. The
artist has constructed what appear to be sinuous shadows, perfectly
symmetrical black and gray contour lines on the backs of twenty or more
human subjects in the photograph. Yet, these same figures remain
haunting, naked but not erotic, all sensuous, graceful, and elegant, all
posed identically.
New Crowd #46, 2000
25x37.5" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 7
|
Another image seen in the collection “Crowd” appears to be taken
looking down on twenty-two symmetrically crowded bald, hairless, heads—a
Greek chorus of faceless figures. One person is looking to the heavens
with eyes closed and mouth open in what “appears” to be an agonizingly
painful scream.
New Crowd #62, 2004
25x37.5" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 7
|
In another image fifteen persons, all masked and cloaked as acolytes in
black sit on a black bleacher. Each figure is holding one puppet, each
puppet an inanimate white miniature skeleton, each skeleton dancing.
Crowd 35
14x19" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 7
|
Who are these bound figures huddled in perfectly arranged rows? Who are
these four so weighted down with heavy iron “I” beams? What is the
meaning of the Sisyphean figure rolling large human size sand balls into
neat and orderly patterned rows? What is one to make of these
provocative mysterious allegories? Misha Gordin’s images open doors into
one’s own psyche and compel us to examine our own meanings. Poet and
critic John Wood, the editor of the 21st Editions, says of Misha
Gordin’s work, “The signature of Misha Gordin and the essence of his art
is empathy. Gordin is not a recorder of the grief and pain of a
particular person or group. It is the grief and struggle of all
humankind.”
Tomas III
26x35" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 7
|
Prisoner of Memory, 1983
13x18" Silver Gelatin Print, Ed. 45
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