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Press

Russian Eyes

Oleg Videnin (46)is looking straight into the eyes of his fellow Russians. He centers his classic black and white documentary portraits around these fixed stars of a seemingly unknown cosmos. There is a distant glow of 18th century Russia in some of the dark pupils. The way an elegant young lady wears a little glass heart on a thin chain over a lace band collar and a velvety little handbag (02), she could be a character imagined by Tolstoy, Pushkin or Dostoyevsky for one of their heartrending novels and novellas. Her name is Tonja, in one picture her subtle smile speaks of a precocious, hence very attractive female intelligence. In another shot (03) she stands crying on the wrought-iron "lover's bridge" in Astrakhan, a vibrant city close to the delta of the Volga at the Caspian Sea. How could one avoid to think of the overused notion of the deep Russian soul in view of Tonja's demonstration of feelings?

But Videnin's pictures tell short stories of today's Russia. Some of them are strikingly forthright, others full of cautious allusions. Not only the old-worldly bourgois-at-heart among the young and the old are in focus of Videnin's accurately composed square pictures. He also touches the topic of growing up in the country side, showing children and teenagers in tune with their surroundings (11, 15, 16, 17, 18). These are documents of friendships that can last forever, or of flirtations for one summer only. Videnin took some of his emotionally strongest pictures at events or phases that can be turning points in life: Puberty (08), graduation balls (13), discharge of young soldiers (12), separations of friends. 

Some of the old men portrayed have seen so many changes around them, they may have given up caring. Many of them are highly decorated ex-servicemen of the soviet army (04). One of them is wearing his medal of distinction fixed to his jacket with a safety pin -not to loose it in the daily grind his face speaks volumes of (05). Some of the kids Videnin portrayed are obviously better off like the girls from the Bryansk outskirts (06), others seem to be downright poor but they dress up for the caring photographer, like Valentina, who appears in white on a wide-stretched grassland (07).

Russia is finding a little peace of mind after decades of social upheaval, twenty years after the fall of the Soviet empire. There are also radicals in society, Videnin includes them in his photographic survey (10). But in general his pictures speak of a relative peace and the newly gained strength which is in the eyes of the people in these portraits (20).

Oleg Videnin (born 1963) photographs primarily in his native town of Bryansk or its surrounding countryside where he lives and works today. He graduated from the Bryansk Institute of Technology an an engineer of forestry. Oleg's professional endeavors often explored local personalities: He has worked as a journalist, a radio producer and a local television host. Oleg became a successful businessman in the field of tv networking in the late 1980ies.

He started to take pictures in elementary school with a camera his parents gave him, developed and printed himself but never received formal training. He put his hobby aside until he visited college.  In the days of Perestroika, Videnin took portraits of army soldiers for making money for a short time, then forgot about photography again. It was an on-off affair over many years until 1998, when he made photography his passion. His black-and-white technique is traditional, he is shooting with a Rolleiflex, printing 16x16inches in his own darkroom at home.

Videnin's photographs are located in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, as well as other galleries and private collections. In Russia and its neighboring countries, Oleg is affiliated with the Photographer.ru agency, a partner of Magnum Photos. His handprinted photographs will be on show October 15th in Sputnik Gallery, Chelsea, New York City. The title of the exhibition and of his first book to be released end of August in Russia is "The Return Route". It contains all the portraits presented here.

Horst Klower,

NYT / LENS

New-York, 2009

 

Oleg Videnin

DIEGESI ESPRESSIVA DEL DIANCO E NERO

 

 

condotta in Cinema I, Gilles Deleuze _-.indivudua,  come terza varietà della -bergsoniana  "immagine-movimento",1”immagine-affezione", che nell'espressiorismo sarebbe caratterizzata dal presentarsi delvolto in primo piano e dal suocostituirsi in qualità assoluta, insiemeiconico di espresso ed espressione. Dall'interpretazione di Deleuze risulta peroche l'artista ha a disposizione diversemodalità per far emergere la "potenza"dei qualìa affettivi correlandoli con la situazione concreta e con le coordinatespazio-temporali (ambientazioneekairós). Graziea tale raccordo, ilpercetto (o, per usare la terminologia diDeleuze, fimmagine-percezione") assume il carattere di "immagine-azione". Nel proprio medium artistico, con grande eleganza formale e perfetta scelta del "tempo" fotografico, Videnin realizza un analogo connubio figurativo fra"espressionismo" e "naturalismo". Cosi. i giovani volti ritratti dal fotogra­fo russo(come lo erano, per nazionalità o per formazione, alcuni registi fondamentalinella storia del cinema: Pudovkm. Dovzenko, Vertov, Ejzenstejn, Kulesovrimandano a quelli, a noi più familiari. dei pasoliniani "ragazzi di vita”, dei bambini-adulti del neorealisimo ,dei più remoti scugnizzi di Vinchenzo Gemito. Il risultato è una combinatione. artisticamente assai intrigante, di snggetti che appaiono "assoluti", pur essendoimmersi, come ci avverte la didascalia delle foto, in uno spazio (per lo piularegione di Bryansk, contrada natia di Mdenin, e perciò affettivamente connotata) e in untempo narrativo ben determinanti. Questa primaria dialettica strutturarale fra astratto e diegetico, connaturata non solo ai registi (espressionisti e non dell'età sovietica, ma anche ai frandi romanzieri russi dell'Ottocento,

e alimentata anche dall'effetto di chiaroscuro consentito dall"'inattuale" scel­ta del bianco e nero.

Le  fotografie di Videnin, che coglie i suoi personaggi in paesaggi naturali, artificiali e misti, sono contrassegnate, come secondo elemento dialettico fon-

dlamentale, da un raffinato gioco di col­legamento e sconnessione spaziale fra le figure e fra i piani, e ciascuna di esse lascia emergere un valore percettivo e una tonalità affettiva sempre diversi. Oltre che in Valentina in white, il naturali­smo parrebbe dominare nel trittico ide­ale costituito da Ballon flying away, Carp e Denis and dandelion. L'osservatore attento allo scavo fisiognomico sarà fortemente attratto dalla scansione delle modalità di stupore riconoscibili in questi volti: implosivo e imbronciato nel fanciullo che si è lasciato sfuggire il palloncino, soddisfatto nel trionfante pescatore, at­tento e incuriosito nel soffiatore. Tut­tavia, la lettura analitica rivela in due casi un significativo scarto dialettico, al tempo stesso simbolico e percettivo: al corpo immobile del bambino colto nel momento in cui il palloncino è appena volato via, con le dita della mano destra irrigidite nella loro positura, si contrap­pone sullo sfondo una sagoma lieve, quasi fantasmatica e danzante, che, con gesto sicuro, tiene sollevato il suo e che l'intervallo prodotto dalla desolata carreggiata stradale isola in uno spazio­tempo e in una tonalità affettiva incol-mabilmente separati da quelli del primo piano; al campestre gioco infantile con l'evanescente ciuffo del dente di leone, deludente metafora dell'effimero, fa ri­scontro lo sfondo di solidi e grigi corpi di fabbrica.

A proposito di metafore, l'immagine più significativa della dialettica intrinse­ca alla vita Videnin ce la offre in School-Leavers ceremony, in cui alcuni elementi difformi controbilanciano la positività affettiva dell'abbraccio. In primo luogo, vi è un dato percettivo psicologicamente fondamentale: la sensazione di perdita dell'equilibrio prodotta dal deciso spo­stamento a destra dell'asse verticale del­le figure. Poiché, come ha mostrato Ar-j,nheim, le immagini hanno la tendenza a "pesare" maggiormente sul lato destro, pittori e fotografi si ingegnano di cor­reggere l'anisotropia spaziale mettendo in opera una serie di accorgimenti sia sul piano oggettuale sia su quello simbo­lico. Nella foto di Videnin questo com­pito di ricquilibrazione è affidato alla sola testa della ragazza, che -premendo verso sinistra- si oppone, ma solo par­zialmente, al movimento di "caduta". In secondo luogo, sullo sfondo nebuloso e grigio (come lo sono quasi tutti quel­li di Videnin) si scorge un vialetto che si perde all'orizzonte. In modo solidale con la perdita dell'equilibrio, simbolo di insicurezza, il sentiero che si apre alle spalle dei due graduates rappresenta l'i­nizio dell'epoca delle scelte, di un cam­mino incerto e misterioso nel suo pro­cedere e nei suoi esiti. La struttura in­trinsecamente dialettica dell'immagine risulta rafforzata se la confrontiamo con un'altra, paragonabile per atmosfera affettiva: Dragonfly, in cui si ha un'oppo­sta direzione dell'inclinazione dell'asse delle teste e l'equilibrio è garantito dalla verticalità dei corpi. In questo caso, l'e­lemento di disturbo psicologico è dato dal fatto che la "libellula" del titolo non è un elemento naturalistico, ma appar­tiene alla sfera dell'artificiale: è soltanto un'immobile immagine stampata su un capo di abbigliamento. Metaforica e dialettica è anche la diso­mogeneità spaziale dell'opera più po­tente della serie dal punto di vista del pathos: Wheel, ove si mescolano il natu­rale e l'artificiale delle estreme perife­rie urbane. Grazie anche alle soluzioni adottate (sfocatura del primo piano e riduzione della profondità di campo, che trasforma la ruota in gigantesco e incombente nimbo oscuro), l'insieme costituito, nell'ordine di successione dei piani, dallo stento fogliame, dalla pre­senza umana e dai relitti industriali as­sume -anche grazie all'accentuato gioco chiaroscurale- l'apparenza di un'instal­lazione carica di energia e semantica­mente e sintatticamente compatta. Nel complesso, la costruzione percettiva e oggettuale dà luogo a una sensazione psicologica di abbandono e di degrado, rinverdendo le fortune di quella tipolo­gia postindustriale di approccio artistico che, in un'indagine ampia e concettual­mente notevole pubblicata alla fine del secolo scorso, AveAppiano ricondusse all"'estetica del rottame".

Oscar Meo - Nel corso dell'indagine

Rome, 2014

 

* * *

Over the desolate tired earth, with its fields, forests and waters, souls are wandering. Tranquility is not their lot. Because they did not have and they don’t have now the goodness to overcome the perpetuity of this land-country’s expanse, from the earliest times chained by timelessness. The misty shroud waves, tightly enveloping the anxious paths of souls-pilgrims. They crave for the guiding beam of light which, for the earthly term, would connect them with this earth and endow them with the will to bring life into human flesh and carry out on earth that task of transforming it, for which the fruitful breath of life was given to people.

Magnanimous is the light and boundless are its efforts. Infinitely it breaks through the shroud of timelessness, reminding man of the moments of the momentary flash of life. And therefore the miracle of illumination and the reunion of the soul and man, even if for a short instant, are not exhausted. Then man begins to see clearly the immense depth of time, in which, for this moment, he has been allowed to sense the soul in himself and to fuse his image with eternity.

… And once again the souls plod endlessly on, believing that one day transfiguration will occur and that the people of this earth, having been strengthened by acquiring them, will dispel the age-old shroud and will fill the earth with the fruits of their work…

… Such is the Russia of Videnin, the servant of light.

Evgeny Berezner

curator

Moscow, 2009

 

* * *

 

Nonostante il titolo “The Russians”, in cui cogliamo una vistosa assonanza con “The Americans”, i ritratti di Oleg Videnin hanno molto più in comune con il lavoro di August Sander che non con le immagini di Robert Frank. La differenza non è di carattere tematico: come prima il fotografo svizzero ha restituito lo spaccato della società americana, così il russo Videnin ha esplorato i mutamenti, le aspirazioni di una nazione, condividendo con Frank un approccio antropologico: raccontare la Storia contemporanea attraverso la ritrattistica. Le assonanze però finiscono qui. Videnin, si diceva è più imparentato con Sanders e il suo “Ritratti del Ventesimo secolo”, nel quale a un ampio catalogo di soggetti è affidato il ruolo di narrare la contemporaneità della repubblica di Weimar. Le persone di Sander sono ritratte senza orpelli, senza apparenti accorgimenti tecnici, lasciando che la narrazione fluisca naturalmente attraverso una descrizione affidata ai mestieri, ai professionisti, ai contadini, agli artisti e a ogni componente la società tedesca del tempo.
In Videnin cogliamo lo stesso stringente racconto, l’urgenza di raccontare storie che non possono essere mediate da nessuna interlocuzione: nella genuinità di uno scatto, nella sua freschezza si coglie meglio l’autenticità. I personaggi di Videnin sono giovani, spesso giovanissimi. Non è un caso. Nella giovanile freschezza di ognuno degli sguardi l’occhio si compiace nell’intravvedere una generazione ancora alle prese con il gioco, con le scoperte che solo l’adolescenza ne è colma ma che immaginiamo al contempo giovani cui augurare un futuro prospero, sereno e in cui il disagio di una società che ha cambiato pelle troppo rapidamente sia per sempre risolto. Gli adolescenti di Videnin hanno una compostezza rigidissima, compresi quelli sorpresi a rispondere alla scioltezza informale e irridente tipica dell’età. Scene quotidiane, svuotate dall’epica del raggiungimento stilistico cui spesso è affidato un addendo narrativo. Qui, nelle fotografie di Videnin vediamo scene di vita ripetibili, come un racconto che si rinnova giorno dopo giorno e che, secondo qualcuno, conserverebbe qualcosa impossibile da narrare, come se il mondo, proprio per essere raccontato, dovesse essere popolato da un epos incombente da catturare al momento. La vita non ha angoli oscuri: non cela né nasconde, non si ritrae ma al contrario lascia che la sua voce si sparga ovunque. A un fotografo non spetta che ascoltarla e tradurla in immagini. Oleg Videnin lo ha fatto, riuscendovi.

_________

Despite the title "The Russians", where we have a vivid assonance with "The Americans," Oleg Videnin's portraits are much more in common with August Sander than with Robert Frank's images.
The difference is not of a thematic nature: as before, the Swiss photographer returned the breakdown of American society, so Russian Vidin explored the changes and aspirations of a nation, sharing with Frank an anthropological approach: telling contemporary history through portraiture . The assonances, however, end here.
Videnin was said to be more related to Sander and his "Portrait of the Twentieth Century," in which a large catalog of subjects is entrusted with the role of telling the contemporaryity of the Weimar republic. The people of Sanders are portrayed without finery, without apparent technical details, leaving narrative flowing naturally through a description given to trades, professionals, peasants, artists, and every component of German society of that time.
In Videnin we find the same tight story, the urgency to tell stories that can not be mediated by any interlocution: in the genuineness of a shot, its freshness is better captured by authenticity. The characters of Videnin are young, often very young. It's not by chance. In the juvenile freshness of each eye, the eye is pleased with the intriguingness of a generation still in contact with the game, with the discoveries that only adolescence is full but that we also imagine young people to wish for a prosperous, serene and which the discomfort of a company that has changed skin too quickly is forever resolved.
Videnin's teenagers have a rigid composure, including those surprised to respond to the informal and irridious, typical of age. Daily scenes, emptied of the epic of stylistic achievement, often entrusted to a narrative. Here, in Videnin's photographs, we see lifelike scenes of life, as a story that is renewed day after day and that, according to some, it would keep something impossible to tell, as if the world, just to be told, should be populated by a looming epic to be captured at this time.
Life has no dark corners: it does not conseal or hide it, it does not retract, but instead lets its voice spread everywhere. It is not up to a photographer to listen to it and translate it into images. Oleg Videnin did it, winning the challenge.

 

Giuseppe CICOZZETTI,

Sicily, 2017

 

 

 

~ TALKING PICTURES ~

INTERVIEWS WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD

 

Alasdair Foster  21 August 2021  Europe

Oleg Videnin: Photographs from My Heart

© Oleg Videnin ‘Four Guys from the Belye Berega, Bryansk Region’ [detail] 2004

I am a photographer who takes pictures of people that seem beautiful and mysterious to me.
And that is all.

Introduction

Forgive me if I speak personally… Sometimes, the work of a photographer steals in through the eye to settle in an armchair of the mind almost before one is aware it has entered. Once comfortably ensconced, the images take up residence and never leave. So it was for me with the work of Oleg Videnin. I first saw his photographs in an exhibition curated by Irina Tchmyreva and Evgeny Berezner for the Australian Centre for Photography. What immediately struck me then was the achingly gentle tonality of each image – there is no sharp contrast or dramatic chiaroscuro – light delicately caresses each subject to be caught in the velvety patina of the silver-gelatin print. Each print a unique, sensual artefact, something it is hard to grasp in the backlit translucence of a digital screen.

But these are portraits, and it is people who are their central concern. With few exceptions, each individual meets our gaze. Some seem a little melancholy, some mildly amused, most survey us with inscrutable intensity. We are used to the photographic pose. We all do it, knowingly presenting a performance of self that we have come to understand best transmutes in the alembic of the camera to the gilded image of who we wish to believe we are, how we think we should appear. Not so here. For all their frontal framing, few of the people in Oleg Videnin’s photographs suggest such a self-conscious arrangement of persona. These are not images that clamour for our attention, their subjects remain quietly assured of who they are… It is they who regard me from their world of shaded greys; a world I have never visited and yet feels so uncannily familiar. It is that intimate conversation of the eyes that beguiles me.

And so it is, each time I look at the portraits of Oleg Videnin: the paradoxical sense of intimacy and restraint, of recognition in the midst of that which is ultimately unknowable. For me, the mysterious potency of these photographs lies in the way they sensitise the imagination. Like a touch so light it hardly makes contact, they send a shiver of intense awareness through my being.

Alasdair Foster


© Oleg Videnin ‘Denis with Dandelion, Baikal’ 2003

Interview

Alasdair: When did you begin making photographs?

Oleg: I have been photographing since childhood – for city kids at the time, it was a very common hobby. I was about seven years old when my parents gave me my first camera: a simple Soviet-made Smena-8. A little later I got a twin-lens Lubitel, a cheap replica of a Rolleiflex [both cameras manufactured by Lomo]. What I was shooting then, I don’t remember anymore… No prints and films from that period have survived. I just loved everything – the feel of the camera, the image in the viewfinder, the sound of the shutter and, of course, the mysterious magic of image manifestation.

You have worked as a forest ranger, a theatre actor, and a journalist. Have those experiences helped to shape the way you take photographs?

It is true that I have worked in various fields and, of course, all experiences affect a person and his work in some way or another. But that is secondary to my deeper convictions. What is much more important is the kind of people one connects with, what one read in childhood and adolescence, the kind of movies one watched and music one listened to, the visual environment in which one grew up. While the Soviet era had its disadvantages, there was one indisputable plus – we were protected from poor-quality literature, cinema and music. I only read, watched and listened to the classics and this had a crucial formative effect on me. Today, I still draw on the world of my childhood and adolescence: it lies deep within me.

© Oleg Videnin ‘Cleaning Day, Bryansk Region’ 2007
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Inner Circle, Bryansk’ 2007
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Soldiers who Guard the Gadzhiyevo Submarine Base, Murmansk Region’ 2008

The internet was important in helping you establish your reputation. How did that shape your practice?

I do not think it did. I have always considered myself to be an artist (if you don’t use the word in its pretentious sense). I drew, I photographed, I acted in the student theatre, then I wrote a lot, sang, and photographed again.

But yes, in one way the internet affected me: it helped me find a mass audience. After all, before the internet, you could only show your photos to your family and friends. It was impossible for an unknown photographer to get published in photographic magazines, or organise an exhibition. As soon as the first Russian photo site appeared, I logged in. My registration number for this site, where a few years later there were millions of members, was 77.

I was lucky that, amid the plethora of enthusiastic and abusive comments to be found on these popular photo sites, I was noticed by the professional community and soon received invitations from several galleries.

 © Oleg Videnin ‘Portrait with God, Bryansk Region’ 2017
© Oleg Videnin ‘Wheel, Bryansk Region’ 2007
 © Oleg Videnin ‘The Medal, Bryansk Region’ 2004

Your portraits are made in and near your hometown.

Bryansk is typically Russian. It was originally just a small town in the Oryol province. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were only about ten thousand inhabitants lived here. But during my childhood, the population increased to almost half a million, and the city has now become a regional centre. Even so, given this expansion is only recent, the spirit of Bryansk continues much as it always was.

What makes it special for you?

It’s amazing to me, but I’m only interested in making pictures here in the town and surrounding villages. Even in neighbouring regions, I rarely find people who are really interesting to me in photographic terms. They seem to be exactly the same as here in Bryansk, but my camera mostly remains in its case. I cannot explain it…

 © Oleg Videnin ‘Portrait on a Platform. Bryansk Region’ 2005
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Fresh Milk, Bryansk Region’ 2004
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Polina and Sasha, Bryansk Region’ 2019

Who are the people in your photographs?

Most are strangers that I meet on the street. I used to wander around on foot in search of subjects, but later I found it more productive to drive around, methodically circling the alleys and crossing the fields. I have learned how to find what I am looking for. Of course, I have also photographed people I know, but really what I want to do is find photographically interesting subjects that I do not know.

You have a distinctive style of portraiture – traditional, but precise and authentic. How do you go about making a portrait?

Many people think that I spend a long time talking with my subjects so that I can somehow ‘reveal their inner world’. This is not the case. Perhaps it is a personal idiosyncrasy, but I have long understood that, for me, talking with a person I want to photograph does not get them to open up. On the contrary, they tend to close down; they start ‘performing’ rather than being natural.

It takes me less than three minutes to make a shot, sometimes much less. People going about their business don’t have time for self-reflection and I do not seek to reveal their ‘inner world’. I am a photographer, nothing more. I need just the shortest time to create an image that will satisfy me. I guide the subject using my facial expressions, some words (later I cannot remember what because I am concentrating wholly on making the image). The picture made, I say “thank you” to the person and they continue on their way.

 © Oleg Videnin ‘In the Village Park, Bryansk Region’ 2011
 © Oleg Videnin ‘On the Road to Smolensk, Bryansk Region’ 2007
 © Oleg Videnin ‘His Village Street, Bryansk Region’ 2020

Your prints are beautifully made. The tone is subtle and quite dark. They have a particular mood.

I have always loved old photographs, especially those taken in large format, where the image is soft and moulded but with an abundance of detail. I don’t like hard, bright light. I love cloudy weather, when the light does not cut, but washes over surfaces.

And almost all your photographs are square format.

It was more than twenty years ago that I got a twin-lens camera and fell in love with the square format… I remember the exact moment…

A boy was walking home after school in a village on the outskirts of Bryansk. I stopped him and took two shots – in the first he was laughing, and in the second he was calmly looking at the camera. This second photograph was to become one of my best known, my calling card… and it was after making this photograph that I switched permanently to the square frame.

[Left] © Oleg Videnin ‘Young Russia, Bryansk Regional’ 2003
[Right] © Oleg Videnin ‘Valentine in White, Bryansk Region’ 2008

Another image that is widely known is the girl in the white dress…

It was evening. I was about twenty kilometres from the city, returning home from a shoot. This girl in a white dress was sitting at an empty bus stop waiting for a bus. I gave her a lift to the city and took this portrait on the way. Valentina said that she had been at a neighbouring village for a wedding, but when her parents went home, they forgot to take her with them.

In 2018, I tried to find Valentina again to take a photograph ‘ten years on’… Unfortunately, I found her in the cemetery; she had died in a car accident.

© Oleg Videnin ‘Tonya is Crying on the Bridge of Lovers, Astrakhan’ 2007

There is a photograph, also well known, that stands out as a little different from your other work, in two ways. The strong emotion portrayed and the use of flash light. I am thinking of the image of the women standing on a bridge, crying.

In 2007, I was walking around Astrakhan with two art school students. While we were walking, one of them burst into tears (it is not necessary for you to know the reason why) and I made this portrait. (And yes, it is the only one I have made using flash.) A few years later, a young film director from Moscow [Anton Kolomeets] was inspired by this photograph to make a feature film with the same name ‘Tonya is Crying on the Bridge of Lovers’ [2014].

The Italian art critic Giuseppe Cicozzetti has likened your work to August Sander’s documentation of Weimar society. Do your portraits form a kind of ‘typology’?

Certainly not! Unlike Sander, I am not trying to make a typological survey of society, where there will be a cook, a soldier, a shopkeeper, a farmer, an engineer… I have no interest in the profession and status of a person in the frame.

 © Oleg Videnin ‘Nikolai and Sergey, Bryansk’ 2011
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Beetle, Bryansk Region’ 2012
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Male and Female, Bryansk Region’ 2004

What is it you seek to communicate through your portraits?

I am not a sociologist or a journalist. I am a photographer who takes pictures of people that seem beautiful and mysterious to me. And that is all. I never think about the fate of these people. This kind of thinking is not helpful to me as a photographer. I diligently avoid any attempt to dissect my work with the scalpel of logic. I am sure that if one did the analysis, one could probably find the who, what, why… But I do not want to know these things, because they would surely destroy the irrational, intuitive, subtle… In my opinion, rationality is destructive of creativity.

And I don’t do ‘projects’. That’s not for me. While I may gather work from my archive into a thematic group for a book or exhibition, that is always a retrospective selection. I do not purposefully set out to make a series on a particular topic; something intentionally planned, designed and implemented. That’s photography from the mind. I love photography from my heart.

So how do you decide what to photograph?

I just shoot what is close to me and what I love. A photographer, if free of editorial obligations or preconceived attitudes, broadcasts the ideas and feelings of which he is personally the bearer. It seems to me that I am trying to recapture my childhood and adolescence through photography. I want to preserve, at least on film, the final embers of the pre-digital era, when people had more time to talk, went to visit each other, met in parks and dance halls, and not virtually on the internet…

 © Oleg Videnin ‘High School Graduation, Bryansk’ 2005
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Playground in Kikino, Kaluga Region’ 2008
 © Oleg Videnin ‘Winter is Coming Soon, Bryansk’ 2003

Over the twenty years that you have been photographing in Bryansk, what has changed?

Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer people who are interesting to me in the photographic sense. I always strive to ensure that my photographs have a certain timeless quality. Yet, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people in clothes without vulgar slogans that immediately date the scene. If you pay attention, looking at my portraits, it is not always easy to determine when they were taken – in the 2000s, 2010s, 1980s or even in the 1960s. It also seems to me that faces are changing. However, that might be my age. Perhaps my eyes are becoming less sharp…

What have you learned through making these pictures?

I have come to understand that one can find fulfillment in different ways. If the internet had not appeared when it did, I would probably have abandoned photography and discovered my vocation in something else: writing books, composing songs, drawing… who knows? But it happened as it happened, and I am happy about that.

I have also come to realise that believing in yourself works wonders. Don’t be swayed by praise or criticism of your work. You should go your own way, explore the unknown, however gropingly. Try to leave behind something whole and worthy. Do what seems right, and come what may.

© Oleg Videnin ‘My Dark Room, Bryansk’ 2010

Biographical Notes

Oleg Videnin was born in Bryansk, Russia, in 1963. In 1985, he graduated from Bryansk Technological Institute as a Forestry Engineer. He has worked as a forest ranger, actor, and journalist for newspapers, radio, and television. In the early days of Russian social media he became one of the top five photographers discussed online. In 2005, he joined the agency PHOTOGRAPHER.RU.

He has exhibited widely with more than twenty solo exhibitions around the world including Australia, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and USA. His work is represented in a number of important public and private collections including those of the Moscow Museum Contemporary Art, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), and the Museum of Photo Art (Kolomna). His work is published in four monographs including ‘The Return Route. Photographs by Oleg Videnin’ (2009), and ‘Girls from the Outskirts’ (2021). In 2011, the British filmmaker Christian Klinger released ‘The Russians’, a film about the photography of Oleg Videnin. He lives and works in Bryansk.


This interview is a Talking Pictures original.