Photographer alexander kitaev phone number. Presentation of a new book by Alexander Kitaev. For purchase inquiries contact

Alexander Kitaev was born in 1952 in Leningrad. Worked as a photographer at a shipbuilding enterprise (1978-1999). He received his primary photographic education at the VDK photo club and at the courses for photojournalists at the House of Journalists. Since 1975, he has been active in creative exhibition activities - the author of 35 solo and participant of more than 70 group exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Member of the Union of Photographers of Russia (1992). Member of the association “Photopostscriptum” (1993). Member of the Union of Artists of Russia (1994). The works are in Russian and foreign public and private collections. Currently works as a free-lance photographer.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1988
"City without kumach". showroom "Nevsky, 91", Leningrad

1991 "Playing with space". Design firm "Sosnovo", Leningrad.
1994
"A POSTERIORI". "PS-Place", St. Petersburg. (c)
"Constants". Exhibition Hall of the Moscow region. St. Petersburg (catalog)
"The tricks of Vertumnus". Studio "Stool", St. Petersburg

1995 "White Interior". "Golden Garden" Publishing house "LIMBUS-PRESS", St. Petersburg
1996 PHOTOSYNKYRIA 96. 9th International Meeting. Thessaloniki, Greece
"Petersburg Album". Gallery "Old Village", St. Petersburg
"Inside view" (FOTOFAIR'96) . Central Exhibition Hall "Manezh", St. Petersburg
"Petersburg through the eyes of Wubbo de Young, Amsterdam through the eyes of Alexander Kitaev." Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam; Central Exhibition Hall "Manege", St. Petersburg.
"Images of the Holy Mountain". KODAK Pro-Center, St. Petersburg.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1988 "...a city familiar to tears." Exhibition-action of the association "Community of Photographers", Leningrad - Moscow.
1989
"Weapon of Laughter" All-Union photo exhibition, Armavir (c)
IV Biennale of Analytical Photography. Yoshkar Ola, Cheboksary (c)

1993 "Annual Exhibition of the Union of Photographers of Russia". Central House of Artists, Moscow
"Photopostscriptum". Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (k)
1994-96 “Self-Identification. Aspects of St. Petersburg Art in the 1970s-1990s. Kiel, Berlin, Oslo, Sopot, St. Petersburg
1995 "The latest photography art from Russia". Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Hannover, Gerten, Germany.
1997 "Petersburg' 96", Central Exhibition Hall "Manezh", St. Petersburg
"Northern Dream" (CD-ROM Photo-show) within the framework of the festival "Salyut, Petersburg", World Financial Center, New York, USA
"Window to the Netherlands", Exhibition Center of the Union of Artists, St. Petersburg; Lily Zakirova Gallery, Hesden; showroom De Waag, Lesden; Conservatory of Groningen, Groningen;
“Photo relay race: from Rodchenko to the present day”, Municipal gallery “A-3”, Moscow;
"100 photographs of St. Petersburg", Biblioteka im. V.V. Mayakovsky, St. Petersburg; Russian Cultural Center, Prague;
Projectus. Thrown Forward”, Exhibition Center of the Union of Artists, St. Petersburg (catalogue);
New Photography from Russia, Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, D.C., US;
“Exhibition of works by the folk photo studio “VDK”, Vyborg Palace of Culture, St. Petersburg;
"Shift. From Leningrad to Petersburg”, Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky, St. Petersburg;
Tower of Babel, Art College Gallery, St. Petersburg;
"Tara INCOGNITA", Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky, St. Petersburg

COLLECTIONS
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg
Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow
The Gary Ranson Center for Humanitarian Researches, Austin, Texas, USA
The Navigator Foundation, Boston, USA
Mendl Kaszier Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Collection of the restaurant "Vena", St. Petersburg
Collection of the Free Culture Foundation, St. Petersburg
Collection of the publishing house "LIMBUS-PRESS", St. Petersburg
Bank Imperial, St. Petersburg
Paul Zimmer, Stuttgart, Germany
Herbrand, Cologne, Germany
and other private collections in Germany, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, the USA and Russia.
Source http://www.photographer.ru/resources/names/photographers/26.htm

About the book by Alexander Kitaev "Petersburg light in the photographs of Karl Doutendey"
Dmitry Severyukhin

Alexander Kitaev
Petersburg light in the photographs of Carl Doutendey
St. Petersburg, "Rostok", 2016 - 204 p. (Series PHOTOROSSIKA)
ISBN 978-5-94668-188-9

For purchase and distribution inquiries, please contact:
[email protected],
[email protected];
www.rostokbooks.ru

The book by Alexander Kitaev, a well-known St. Petersburg photographer, curator and historian of photography, tells about the different stages of life and work of the outstanding photography pioneer Karl Doutendey, who created the first reliable photographic images of representatives of the highest strata of Russian society.

The book is addressed to a wide range of readers interested in the history of photography and the culture of St. Petersburg.

The name of the pioneer of photography, Karl Doutendey, is little known not only to the general public, but also to specialists, meanwhile, 19 years of his life and work were spent in the capital of the Russian Empire, and he stood at the very origins of Russian photography. Without going into enumeration of the reasons for the current state of affairs, we note only one - for almost the entire 20th century, the state structure of Russia, to put it mildly, did not contribute to the study of pre-revolutionary culture, and, as a result, a huge layer of documents and materials on the history of Russian photography turned out to be little mastered and described. Until now, almost the only source of knowledge about the life and work of the photographer was the artistic autobiography of his son, the famous German artist and poet Max Doutendey, never published in Russian. And now, on 204 pages of the book by Alexander Kitaev, a well-known Russian photographer and historian of photography, for the first time we read a detailed and documented biography of the light painter. In addition, it reproduced more than 170 excellent rare photographic treasures provided by domestic and foreign government collections, as well as private collectors in Russia and Germany. Here the author published dozens of documents relating to the early period of Russian photography.

Full of ups and downs, the life of Karl Doutendey captures. He was born in tiny Saxon Aschersleben. In 1839, the year photography was born, he lost his father and trained as an optician-mechanic. In 1841 he bought a camera obscura in Leipzig and, having mastered the daguerreotype on his own, entered into full commercial risks and competition path of a professional portrait painter. In 1843, the newly converted artist produced daguerreotype portraits of Duke Leopold of Dessaus and his family. In the same year, with a letter to Russian empress, a 24-year-old Saxon arrived in St. Petersburg. Soon he became one of the best daguerreotypers in the capital, and in 1847, before most of his colleagues, he finished with daguerreotype and switched to promising photographic technology according to the Talbot method. Making portraits of representatives of the upper strata of Russian society, by the beginning of the 1850s. master innovator took a leading position in the St. Petersburg photographic world. In the mid-1850s, after the invention of collodion technology and the total march of the so-called. " business cards”, he was again on his own - he was the first in Russia to introduce photolithography, photograph the best representatives of Russian culture and distribute their portraits through magazines and art salons. In St. Petersburg, Doubenday was married twice. His first wife, having given birth to four daughters, committed suicide. The second wife, a Petersburger, bore him a son here. In 1862, family and business circumstances developed in such a way that the photographer was forced to leave Russia and settle in Bavaria, in Würzburg, where new ups and downs awaited him. Here, starting from scratch, calling himself "a photographer from St. Petersburg", he again became a leading portrait painter and a wealthy person. During the German period of his life, his second wife, who gave birth to another son, died of an incurable disease, his first-born son committed suicide, and the youngest son, flatly refusing to continue his father's work, became, as already mentioned, a poet and artist.

Kitaev's book "Petersburg Light in the Photographs of Karl Doutendey" is more than just a biography of one of the first photographers who worked in the capital of Imperial Russia. The author, immersing the reader in the social atmosphere of Nikolaev and then post-reform St. Petersburg, tells in some detail about the beginnings of photography in Russia and Europe, shows both the professional environment of the master and the psychological environment in which the pioneers of photography had to operate. The book is written in plain language and beautifully illustrated with first-class artefacts from early photography.

The magnificent works of Carl Dauthendey have been in oblivion for more than 150 years and are now celebrating their real resurrection. The book by Alexander Kitaev sheds light not only on the amazing life and photographic heritage of the pioneer of photography, but makes it exciting interesting story cultures of the second half of the 19th century.

Dmitry Severyukhin,
doctor of art history, professor

They weren't bored

Commentary by Alexander Kitaev

From the day of its publication in 1839, light painting began to rapidly conquer the world. Photographers, being in a reckless and non-stop movement, either climbing rocky peaks or diving into the depths of the ocean, captured the globe in a historically short time, after which they rushed into the abyss of the universe and began to increasingly penetrate into the cosmos of human souls. Rebroadcast for more than two centuries in a row, the magazine and newspaper - "Photography has reached extraordinary perfection in our days" - is an unfading cliché of the headlines of reports about its military operations. This attack of photographers on all fronts, on all spheres of human activity, on the foundations of the universe that have developed over the centuries, was (and is) accompanied by continuous modernization and improvement of photographic tools, multiplying the arsenal of politicians and confessors, scientists and artists, warriors and civilians. However, even today, the beginning of this grandiose all-encompassing invasion remains poorly understood. Despite Benjamin's long-standing statement - "The fog that shrouds the origins of photography is still not so thick ..." - attempts to touch the spring remain completely rudimentary, and, as a result, today many avant-garde figures of the pioneers of photography are barely visible through the thickness of merciless years. There are many reasons for this, and it is not necessary to list them here, but it is important to note that the rejection of the technical nature of the new art played a bad joke on humanity: for more than a century, only easily vulnerable filing cabinets and family albums remained the most reliable refuge for the incunabula of the early years of photography. Of course, the impact of light painting was not as obvious and visible as steam engine, construction railways, the introduction of electricity and aeronautics, but of all the technical innovations generated in the Iron Age and stunning contemporaries, only photography had a chance to acquire the status of another muse and join their round dance. But that didn't happen.

“Photography freed painting from boring work, above all from family portraits,” Auguste Renoir uttered, having made a career as a secular portrait painter. Just this, according to the eminent impressionist, a sad work, became the role of Doutendey and most of the first professionals in photography. They were not bored, and the "leaders of the sun" in just the first half century of the existence of photography filled family albums with as many impressions as all the renoirs of all countries of the world taken together would not have done. Millions of earthlings willingly appeared before their light-painting shells and preserved their authentic appearance for posterity. Meanwhile, the entry of the photographic portrait into everyday practice, into everyday life (the realm of elegance is a taboo!) was far from being peaceful and sometimes caused harsh rejection by many intellectuals. In the second half of the 19th century, “a new kind of painting” was vilified and humiliated, but there is not a single detractor who would not come to the photographer to take a portrait of himself, and then proudly send it to friends and relatives. And yet, since "people made the sun - beauty and driving force universe - to be a painter" (Bulgarin), from the arrogance of connoisseurs of beauty and petty-bourgeois negligence, a number of precious "pictures from nature" have disappeared. In a short historical period, perhaps much more light-painted works were lost than any other cultural monuments from wars and revolutions, fires, floods and other natural and man-made disasters.

For me, there is no doubt that Karl Douthenday is one of the key figures in 19th century photography, and the study of his life and professional path is of the utmost importance for understanding the processes taking place in society and in photography at that time. The master stood at the origins of the now beloved kind of activity of the human race and lived together with photography, multiplying and improving it, for more than half a century. During the distance they traveled together, light painting evolved from a silver tablet on which Daguerre made a sunbeam capture the visible world, to the discovery by Doutendey's client Konrad Roentgen of unknown rays capable of drawing the invisible on a light-sensitive glass photographic plate. , and the survivors are quarreled over different countries. (The latter, however, is not depressing, because internationalism is a generic feature of photography.) In such a starting environment, work began on recreating the biography of the pioneer.

The pressure exerted by the practical Karl Dauthendey on his romantic offspring turned out to be so powerful that, accompanying the "prodigal son" on trips around the world, pursued him for many years. Perhaps the tension subsided only when the book “The Spirit of My Father” was published from the pen of the no longer young and famous writer Max Doutendey. In it, putting aside his favorite wandering rhymes, Maximilian distinctly and talentedly retold his father’s stories he had heard since childhood about his first experiments in photography, the troubles he had experienced in Russia and his passionate but futile desire to transfer the work of his life into his son’s hands. In addition to this invaluable source, we owe the writer another treasure trove: having spent his life in continuous wandering, he somehow miraculously managed to save his father’s archive, part of which later ended up in the Würzburg municipal archive as part of the “Max Dauthendey fund of the writer.”2 By the way, collections family photographic portraits during the earthly life of their first owners, as well as during the life of the first generation of heirs, did not arouse any public interest and carried the function of exclusively family memory. (And this is their difference from a pictorial portrait.) Only in the turbulent 20th century for Europe, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, did many family archives involuntarily end up in museum collections, and then only as auxiliary utilitarian, illustrative material for various studies in the field of material culture.

And here it is impossible not to pay attention to the difference between the family album of a layman client and the photographer's own archive. And in both: dear people, but if in the first - completed and paid samples of someone else's work, then their author-performer is different. Every photographer knows that just pictures taken “for themselves” and “for their own”, and not for a capricious client, are the surest key to understanding the aspirations, searches and methods of work of a colleague. Who, if not the closest relatives and friends, can patiently endure the exercises of a light painter mastering innovations with due humility and understanding? Who, if not them, turning into resigned extras, become the first models of the artist seeking perfection, participants in his endless experiments, his risky experiments, during which, going into the unknown without fear of failure, the portrait painter can try new optics, test photographic materials, set dubious light , work out new poses, composition techniques, etc., etc.? Doubtenday, like many photographers of all future generations, honed his skills in photographing close people, and fortunately we had quite a few such photographs at our disposal. I should not fall into an art criticism analysis, and Doutenday never called himself an artist, but it is amazing how gracefully his pictures are built with his daughters, with sons, with other relatives, how accurate and unconstrained many single portraits of his performance - all these are signs not only high skill and a fairly developed sense of beauty, but also unconditional talent.

Without claiming to be a complete review of all the surviving works of Karl Dauthendey, the author set himself the task of identifying only photographs that reveal and explain the main stages professional activity masters and milestones of the formation of once new profession- a photographer. Whether it succeeded is for the reader to judge.

A. Kitaev

Source http://www.photographer.ru/events/review/6900.htm

Photos of Alexander Kitaev can be seen here

The exhibition of Alexander Kitaev at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography has become a real event in the cultural life of the capital. Kitaev is one of the leading photographers in St. Petersburg, the organizer and curator of numerous projects, and more recently a photography historian. In the history of photographic impressions of St. Petersburg from the time of Ivan Bianchi to the present day, he undoubtedly takes his place by creating a unique image of the CITY. Kitaev's main and favorite theme - Petersburg - is presented on such a large scale for the first time. The exposition includes 130 original author's works created over a quarter of a century.

Alexander Kitaev from interviews over the years:

“There is such a concept - “multi-machine”, that is, a person who owns several working specialties. In photography, I am such a “multi-station”.

“My professional credo has been developed over many years of experience: “Never do what is in demand today.” Work on the topic of the day is perceived by me as an order, as violence against free creativity, which should respond only to the inner movements of the soul.

"Into one beautiful moment I realized that photography absorbed everything else in me, that my blood, in addition to red and white blood particles, also includes light-sensitive silver halides, and without their constant feeling I am not viable, that photography has become my way of life, a way of perception and communication. It happened around 1987."

“The camera should become an extension of the hand and free the head for complete immersion in the creation of the image.”

“... Petersburg is timeless for me, and I try to convey the unchanging spiritual core of this city as a Personality. She is contradictory, this Personality.”

“The portrait will never disappear, because every person on this planet is primarily interested in himself, in himself in the proposed, or in the assumed circumstances. Another thing is that the portrait is not suitable for the refined intellectual and formal postmodernist games that reign in today's art. It is now important for many artists to shout “I!!!” as loudly as possible. And he doesn't even care if there's an echo. And in a portrait, the artist is always in second place, in the first place - the character. And the portrait is addressed to tomorrow, at least, the day. And the portrait assumes at least the possession of a craft, a school. And for contemporary art, all this is not “relevant”. That is why many artists do not do portraits today. I'm in the rearguard. For me, “relevance” in relation to art is a swear word.”

Alexander Kitaev. Photo by Stanislav Chabutkin.

- Alexander, in recent years you have drastically reduced your exhibition activity, your personal exhibitions have become rare, like a holiday. What was this exhibition for you?

- Indeed, there was a time when I annually made several personal exhibitions, not to mention participation in dozens of group ones. I shot a lot, printed a lot, and I wanted people to see the fruits of my labor. Now I am more and more engaged in the history of photography and teaching. There is less and less time to organize your own exhibitions. But if they offer me to make an exhibition and the conditions seem acceptable to me, I agree. The current exhibition is made up of several series and cycles of photographs created in the past. Each of these series was, to some extent, a stage in my life, but together they were never exhibited. It is unlikely that the exhibition can be described as a result, but rather a retrospective.

You are certainly one of the most famous Russian photographers. Is such popularity pleasant, and how do you live with it?

- The term "famous" is hardly applicable to the photographer. The one behind the lens is rarely more famous than the one in front of the lens. Perhaps this is the specifics of the profession. How can you not remember the architects? Their works of art are constantly before our eyes, we all admire and admire them, but few people remember the faces, as well as the names of the creators. So it is with photographers: they illuminate and consecrate the world around them, but they themselves almost always remain in the shadows. So we can only talk about very limited fame, that is, fame in a certain circle of people who, by the nature of their professional activities, are somehow connected with the “consumption” of photography.

The fact that I am, as you put it, "famous" (in a certain circle), in my opinion, has two completely objective reasons. I have been doing photography for a very long time, and during this time there has been a natural change of generations. And in any community or profession, there must always be some authoritative senior. At the present time, it is me. So the point here is not some of my special talents, but I simply retained in myself the initial creative impulse and the feeling of myself, the author, as a tiny link in an endless photographic relay race. Well, another aspect is also related to time. Around the beginning of the 21st century, with the advent of new photographic technologies, millions of people around the world have taken up photography. Many of them want to improve in their hobby and look for someone to learn from, who to focus on. Many people like my photos - that's where, according to the law of large numbers, my fame comes from.

Well, as for "pleasantness" and "how one lives", so here, like any medal, there are two sides. Since I am in plain sight, I have to look at a lot of photos, most often bad ones. And not just to watch, but to say something about them, to explain, because they come to me for advice, for help, for evaluation. It tires and dulls the eye. At the same time, my popularity allows me to solve many issues with less effort and energy. Whether it's bidding with buyers or negotiating with officials to organize exhibitions.

How to develop an artist in yourself?

- A lot depends on starting conditions: family, social circle, place of birth, etc. I was born, as they say, in a “simple” family. My parents are peasant children. His father became a car mechanic, and his mother became a nurse. So the social circle among relatives had little to do with creativity. But they taught me hard work. In my youth, in addition to photography, I mastered many crafts. To work stupidly, mechanically, I was always uninteresting, and in every craft I invented something, showed a creative approach. When photography began to come to the fore in my life, I realized that without changing my social circle (and I worked as a mechanic at a factory), arts, and not crafts, I could not master on my own. Then, in the early 1970s, I joined one of the best photo clubs in the country in those years - the club of the Vyborg Palace of Culture (VDK). It was the first step. Later, already working as a photographer-artisan at the factory, I did a lot of hard self-education in the humanities. One more step: in 1987 I became a member of the Zerkalo photo club, where the creative atmosphere was in full swing at that time. Well, then I was lucky: I met and became friends with a wonderful artist and erudite Pavel Potekhin. He completed my artistic education.

I am convinced that the title of Artist cannot be a self-title. At all times and in all generations of photographers, there were such masters whose work fell out of the general range. In order to somehow mark them, to distinguish them from the general mass, contemporaries called them artists. I have already said somewhere that when my exhibitions began and I heard from visitors in my direction: here, here he is - an artist, I nervously looked around and looked with my eyes: who is it about? It turned out to be about me. It was very unusual. Now this title is pretty compromised. Numerous universities and other educational institutions train artists at the same time as engineers and teachers high school. And many who take a camera in their hands immediately order a business card for themselves, which says that its owner is a photographer-artist. I don't want to join these ranks. I have a feeling things aren't the same these days. There is no more sense in the concept of "photographer-artist" than in the phrase "tram passenger".

— To shoot Petersburg so poignantly, you need to know and feel it well. How was your vision of the City formed?

- How was it formed? I’ll try to tell you, but don’t think that it was some kind of conscious task that I set for myself in my youth. Everything happened somehow by itself. I have always read a lot, and great poets and writers have created many works about St. Petersburg that are included in the treasury of world literature. When I met one or another Petersburg subject - a square, a street, a building, etc. - I already knew something about them from the literature. But I always wanted to know more - the biography of the subject that interested me: who are the parents, when was he born, what time was it? To satisfy this curiosity, one had to study the history of St. Petersburg, and because of this, history in general; the history of Petersburg architecture and architecture in general; biographies of creators and famous inhabitants, and hence geography. Separately - the iconography of St. Petersburg, and hence the history fine arts. Yes, there is a whole complex, you can’t list everything. For me, one thing is certain: The city has shaped me and my vision. Perhaps he chose for something. And I am in his debt. I don’t know how it happened, but, unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I don’t go to the barricades in the fight against this or that innovation in St. Petersburg. I know that the "genius of the place" will cope with everything that does not please him, and God will manage the rest. It seems to me that I have been living in this city for more than three hundred years and I know that no tactical interventions can change its strategy. It is he, the City, who owns us, not we!

When capturing my city, I didn't think about selling my images and almost never took it to order. I have always been the customer. And he earned a living and creativity by a different, applied photography. I think it left an imprint on my pictures.

— Can you name the photographs from which the artist Alexander Kitaev truly began?

You do know that I work in different genres? So, I remember the picture very well, after which I said to myself: now you can shoot Petersburg. That is, I realized that I managed to embody the feeling of Petersburg that lived in me in a sheet with an image. It happened around 1982, after more than ten years of photography. Then I felt in myself - and those around me had not yet seen it - that something was beginning to be born that later critics began to call "Kitaevsky Petersburg". The same thing happened in other genres. Except that when I took up photography (circa 1989), I immediately began to do something that was significantly different from what was done in this genre by my predecessors.

Once, Joseph Brodsky explained to students that the work of a poet is always work in development, selection, and that the poet is in some way Hercules. His exploits are his poems. It is impossible to understand what Hercules is, from one feat, two or three. Hercules is all twelve. It's the same in photography: it is impossible to calculate either the beginning of the path or the scale of the photographer from one picture. Yes, and it’s not Herculean thing to call your actions feats ...

Is your impeccable mastery of composition an innate feeling or the result of labor and many years of experience?

- Neither one nor the other. Here I agree with Thomas Mann: "the knack for which you feel an inner need is acquired quite quickly."

To photograph is to bombard the emulsion (or matrix) with photons. This bombing is not always targeted. But you have to do it at least a bunch. In order not to get into milk, one has to acquire the skill of mastering the composition. Perhaps this skill is given to Petersburgers faster and easier. The inhabitants of the Neva Delta are surrounded by an amazingly harmonious space created by first-class architects, St. Petersburg museums are filled with masterpieces of fine art, providing examples of impeccable composition. This is all from childhood willy-nilly educates the eye. It remains only to take advantage of the fruits of this upbringing and fill your hand.

I must note that the so-called laws of composition are not something once and for all discovered, studied and recommended for indispensable application, which guarantees success. The human eye is becoming more and more armed, and the classical terms of the laws of composition were formulated at the time of the infancy of the fine arts, at the time of their rather simple tools. “Tonal and linear perspective”, “rhythm”, “plot and compositional center”, “diversity”, etc. - no one has canceled this. However, a modern artist uses an ultra-wide-angle or ultra-long-focus lens, shoots on infrared film or looks into the invisible with the help of X-rays, etc. All this breaks the usual ideas about space and object, prompting us to be creative in the rules of composition, to adapt them to the modern vision of man. In my opinion, the laws of composition always arise from the fact of a completed work. The artist, not having read the textbook, but listening to something from above, creates a perfect work. Theorist comes, decomposes the image into components, weighs, feels, measures them and puts everything on the shelves. Then he writes recipes for obtaining masterpieces.

— Constant striving to perfection is the desire for something impossible and unattainable?

- Well no! Just the desire to achieve the maximum possible. A certain tuning fork sounds in me, listening to which I understand whether I have achieved or not achieved. Here, as in any work, there are two aspects: technique and art proper.

Technically speaking, this is how it works. You do know that I still work in silver technology, don't you? And it, unlike digital, digital, does not allow you to take a step back. The entire silver photographic process, with its obligatory multi-stage and non-instant image processing cycle, sets a certain rhythm of life. Silver 35-mm film "sprout" is only a meter sixty-five. But every time you deal with her, you kneel before her. It must be correctly exposed, and you cannot “clean up” the captured film and expose it again. You cannot develop and not fix, fix and not rinse, rinse and not dry, etc. It disciplines. This obliges, forces us to move only forward, towards the ideal, perfect negative - after all, at the second stage, we have to create an equally perfect positive imprint. And here, too, a lot of its subtleties, responsibilities and pitfalls. Here is one example. Working with natural paper always requires two hands. Every graphic artist knows this. It was graphics that have always felt, and I was taught to feel, paper, its texture and density, its behavior in the longitudinal and transverse directions. Always appreciated tactile communication with her. And how offended them, and then me, the careless handling of the work on paper! A certain buyer will come and take the sheet with one hand - that's it, the hall is guaranteed! I'm not talking about fingerprints ... You immediately see: in front of you is an amateur with a pocket stuffed with circulation papers.

This is one side of the issue. Another is that a photographer who wants to be creative constantly has to squeeze the laboratory assistant out of himself, drop by drop. Oh, how many of my colleagues believe that a perfect print is a work of photographic art, completely forgetting that a work is not so much a product as a message. Image production technology today is so good that we are totally surrounded by technically competent photographic images. However, if they depict, reflect something, then for the most part they are a rather primitive inner world of the creator. And they do not give anything to the soul or heart of a sophisticated viewer. Here I again allow myself to quote Brodsky: “One of the main problems that the poet faces today, whether modern or not, is that the poetry that preceded him - in other words, the legacy - is so vast that doubts simply arise, whether you can add something to it, modify your predecessors or remain yourself. ... To think that you are able to say something qualitatively new after such people as Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Auden, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Frost, Eliot .. means to be a very self-confident or very ignorant type. I would place myself in the latter category. When you first start writing, you don't know much about what happened before you. Only in the middle of life do you acquire this knowledge, and it bends to the ground or hypnotizes.

— In evaluation own works Do you only trust yourself?

- In recent years, I try to listen only to myself. I have already spoken about the internal tuning fork. There are few hits in unison with me, but I don’t want to dance to someone else’s tune. I don't even know what else to add here.

But you don't always have to listen to yourself. I'll tell you a story. When I was a photographer at a shipyard, I was annoyed by production tasks that forced me to make print runs of applied photography on precious silver photographic papers. It seemed to me that I could use each such sheet with greater benefit: to print on it some kind of work of art, or even “incorruptible”. It was especially angry when it was the circulation of electrical circuits of this or that device of an underwater or surface ship. After all, there were already photocopying equipment, and a photocopier - faster and cheaper. But no! The requirements of the sailors were immutable: only silver prints! I began to understand, and it turned out that in an aggressive environment only the good old silver technology saves the image and thereby helps the crew in distress to escape. When it comes to the survival of people in extreme situations, how can you argue? What are my artistic ambitions compared to people's lives?

- How did your relations develop with your colleagues, was there a desire to get their recognition?

- At different stages in different ways. Once upon a time, if not to prevaricate, then, of course, it was important to get recognition from colleagues. And that's why. Historians of the Soviet era wrote about the photographers of pre-revolutionary Russia, for example, as follows: "Dmitriev's work developed in the difficult conditions of tsarist times." Now they often say that so-and-so grew up in unbearable conditions of the "scoop". For photographers, the "severity of the conditions" was aggravated by the absolute non-recognition of photography among the arts by Soviet institutions. But we, photographers, thought otherwise! In addition, we worked in an information vacuum and knew very little and saw very little from the work of our foreign colleagues, both predecessors and contemporaries. So we had to learn a lot from each other. There were no other specialists! This is the peculiarity of the domestic photographic community. I remember how, after Perestroika, a flood of gallery owners, curators, art critics poured into our country from the West, who tried to find out from their Russian colleagues something about our contemporary photography. They were dumbfounded: “What? Photo? Are there such artists? That is, photographic art, like sex, in Soviet country could not be...

Then came other times and other relationships. Somehow, imperceptibly, the recognition of colleagues came to me. I know from my own experience how difficult it is to keep the purity of perception and evaluation of the work of old friends and acquaintances. I want distance. Then at least a little like perception in absolute terms.

Alexander Alexandrovich Kitaev - Soviet, and later Russian master of photography, historian, artist. Author of 4 books and numerous publications on photographic art. His photographic portraits are the standard of the genre, and the most famous cycles are works dedicated to the Athos Monastery, St. Petersburg and the Netherlands.

Enthusiasm

Alexander Kitaev was born in Leningrad on November 23, 1952. After the war and the terrible blockade, not much time passed, and the boy witnessed, in fact, the second birth of the city. Already during this period, love for Leningrad-Petersburg was born, which the artist carried through his whole life. I wanted to express my feelings precisely with the help of photography - a tool that allows you to "stop a moment of time."

This opportunity arose in the early 1970s. After leaving school, a guy from a simple family got a job as a mechanic at the famous Zarya electromechanical plant, where, by the way, he worked from start to finish for 8 years (1970-1978). In parallel, in 1971, he entered the correspondence department of the Northwestern Polytechnic Institute.

Within the walls of the educational institution, he met the guys from the photo club of the Vyborg Palace of Culture (VDK). It was not just a circle of interests, but the oldest community of photographers in the country, where outstanding masters of their craft shared their experience with young people. Alexander could not miss the opportunity to improve his skills, and in 1972 joined the ranks of the photography club.

Vocation

Within the community of amateur photographers of the VDK, a wonderful team has crystallized in the person of A. Kitaev, S. Chabutkin, E. Skibitskaya, B. Konov, E. Pokuts. The guys and girls formed the creative group "Window" and worked fruitfully together for several years. They have repeatedly become laureates of various competitions of folk art, city, all-Union and even international exhibitions.

Alexander Kitaev did not want to stop there. His mind demanded great knowledge. He entered the university of working correspondents, which operated at the Leningrad House of Journalists, at the faculty of photojournalists. After graduating in 1977, Alexander Alexandrovich was able to engage in photography professionally. He easily got a job as a full-time photographer at the famous Admiralty Shipyards, a regime shipbuilding plant, where warships were also built.

Search

As experience is gained, every master wants to share it with his students so that his research is not in vain. Alexander Kitaev was no exception. In 1879, he took an active part in the creation of a new photo club at the House of Friendship of Peoples. That's what they called it - the photo club "Friendship". For three years, the master shared professional secrets with young people and colleagues. But in 1982, for unknown reasons, he left the organization, taking up independent creativity.

In subsequent years, he worked hard, experimented, looked for himself in other areas of art. But close live communication with colleagues was clearly not enough. In 1987, Alexander Alexandrovich joined the ranks of the Zerkalo photo club, in 1988 he was a member of the Leningrad association "Photocenter" at the Palace of Culture named after. "Ilyich", in 1989 he was a member of the "Community of Photographers" partnership, created by R. Mangutov. These years have passed in painstaking work, the search for new stories on the wave of perestroika and glasnost, in fact - the search for himself as an author.

Creation

Back in the 1980s, Alexander Kitaev began to create one of the most famous photo cycles of Leningrad, which later became canonical. As one of the critics noted, Kitaev's works are out of time and space. The photographer captured the moment of shooting so subtly that it is impossible to say what period the photo belongs to: is it modern Petersburg, Soviet Leningrad, or Tsarist Petrograd?

Another landmark work of that period was the creation of cycles of photographic portraits of the most famous figures of Leningrad culture. Later, in new Russia, the project continued. Thanks to this series, Alexander Alexandrovich became known as one of the best portrait photographers in the country.

Since the 1990s, the master has been experimenting in a new technique of chemography and photograms - the field of abstract photography. Creativity Kitaev was highly appreciated. In 1992, he was admitted to the Union of Photographers of Russia, and 2 years later - to the Union of Artists of Russia. Since 1998, Alexander Alexandrovich's photo galleries have been exhibited at the "Traditional Autumn Photo Marathon".

New stage

Period 1996 to 2000 was marked by the creation of the Window to the Netherlands series. The work was carried out in close cooperation with colleagues from the Dutch publication Wubbo de Jang. The project turned out to be extremely successful and received rave reviews from professionals. The works draw parallels between the two port cities, equally rightly called the "Venice of the North".

In the 2000s, Kitaev moved to a new creative level. He becomes the organizer of the Art-Tema publishing house, whose goal is to publish literature on photographic skill. Since the mid-2000s, he has been writing books on photography. These are not just practical guides, but a look at photography as an art object. The author is actively exploring the Internet. At one time he was the editor of the Peter-club online magazine.

You can not ignore the unique cycle of photographs of the Athos series. The author went on expeditions to the holy mountain five times and created an amazing chronicle of the life of one of the most closed monasteries in the world.

Editions

  • Photographer about photography (2006).
  • Stereoscope. Subjectively about photographers (2013).
  • Post restante. St. Petersburg by Ivan Bianchi (2015).
  • Petersburg light in photographs by Carl Doutendey (2016).

Since 2012, Kitaev has been educational activities. Teaches photography at various photo centers, schools, educational institutions. Master's experience is highly demanded.

November 18th School of Visual Arts (Moscow) invites you to an exclusive lecture famous photographer, curator, historian of photography Alexander KITAYEV as part of the School's new heading #PITERFOTOFEST-2018. continuation*.

The topic of Alexander Kitaev's lecture: “PHOTOMANIA. A shift from a fashionable living room to a raznochintsy shelter.

Start at 15. 00

We will learn about the photographic pandemic that literally engulfed all of humanity in the first century of the invention of photography and understand the literal meaning of the words: "photomania", "cartomania", "album mania", we will be surprised that, it would seem, the product of the 21st century "no photography - no man or events” goes back to the 19th century.

Alexander Kitaev: “Light painting, which showed great promise of becoming a new art, humbled its ambitions from the fifties of the 19th century and, having taken up the service of everyday needs of commoners, firmly established itself in the rank of craft. Next to the representative of the church who had consecrated family rites from time immemorial, a new actor- The photographer who covered these events. The sacraments of the church rite and the mysterious light-painting image merged in the family album, laying the foundation for building their own family tree tradition, similar to what was previously considered the exclusive privilege of the nobility family tree. In the same place, as proof of their involvement in the political and public life of countries, along with photographs illustrating the stages of family life, portraits of celebrities began to coexist. This phenomenon in the history of photography was called "cartomania" or, in other words, "album mania". What, however, does not change the essence - the passionate collecting of photographic cards and placing them in home albums has acquired the character of a pandemic.

Alexander Kitaev
Photographer, curator, photography historian. Born in 1952 in Leningrad. Member of the Union of Photographers of Russia (1992), the Union of Artists of Russia (1994). In 1977 he graduated from the Faculty of Photojournalism of the City University of Workers' Correspondents at the Leningrad House of Journalists. He was a member of amateur photography associations: photo clubs of the VDK, Druzhba (1972-1982); "Mirror" (1987-1988). Worked as a photographer at a shipbuilding enterprise (1978-1999). Member of the organizational board of the festival "Traditional Autumn Photo Marathon" (1998-2003). Since 1999 freelance artist. In 2000, he organized the Art-Tema publishing house, which specialized in publishing publications on photography (art director, 2000-2001). Editor of the "Art Attic" section of the network magazine Peter-club (2000-2001). Art director of the Raskolnikov photo gallery (2004-2005). Author of more than seventy solo exhibitions held in Russia, England, Germany, Holland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, participant of more than 150 group exhibitions. From 1996 to 2010 as a curator, he carried out eighteen exhibition projects. Author of texts on the history of photography, author and compiler of a number of albums and books. Scholarship holder of the Paris City Hall (2006).
The works are stored in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Russian National Library, St. Petersburg; State Museum history of St. Petersburg; Yaroslavl Art Museum; Museum "Moscow House of Photography"; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; State Russian Museum of Photography, Nizhny Novgorod; Museum of Photographic Collections, Moscow; Museum of Nonconformist Art, St. Petersburg; State Center for Photography (ROSPHOTO), St. Petersburg; Photographic Museum "Metenkov's House", Yekaterinburg; Literary and Memorial Museum of F.M. Dostoevsky, St. Petersburg; Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg State Museum of Musical and Theatrical Art, St. Petersburg; Museum "House of V. V. Nabokov", St. Petersburg. The works are included in the collections of: Free Culture Foundation, St. Petersburg; Foundation historical photography them. Karl Bulla, St. Petersburg; Ruarts Foundation, Moscow; Museum of the History of Photography, St. Petersburg; Museum of Organic Culture, Kolomna; Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow; Harry Ranson Humanitarian Research Center, Austin, Texas, USA; E. Yu. Andreeva, St. Petersburg; V. N. Valrana, St. Petersburg; Galleries "Artnasos", St. Petersburg; Galleries Gisich, St. Petersburg; M. I. Golosovsky, Krasnogorsk; A. V. Loginova, Moscow; O. I. Plyushkova, St. Petersburg; Luke & A Gallery of Modern Art, London; The Navigator Foundation, Boston, USA; The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, USA; The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers; The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswik, NJ, USA; Mendi Kaszier Foundation, Antwerpen, Belgien; Jean Olaniszyn Collection, Losone, Svizzera; M. Redaelli & P. ​​Todorovch, Sorengo, Svizzera; Russian Art Collection Gianni Foraboschi, Milano, Italia; Mark Faist, Houston, TX, USA; Cultural Center of Locarno "Rivellino LDV", Svizzera and others.
He lectured on the history and theory of photography and held master classes at the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg; State Russian Museum of Photography (Nizhny Novgorod); Photographic Museum "Metenkov's House" (Yekaterinburg); Youth Educational Center of the State Hermitage; Museum of the History of Photography (St. Petersburg); Museum of the History of Photography (Kolomna); Baltic Photo School (St. Petersburg); Foundation "Petersburg Photo Workshops" (St. Petersburg); School of Visual Arts (Moscow); Kaliningrad Union of Photographers; State Center for Photography ROSPHOTO (St. Petersburg); Leica Akademie (Moscow), etc.
Op.:
Blessing / int. Art. I. Chmyreva. SPb., 2000
Involuntary landscape line / int. Art. V. Savchuk. SPb., 2000
Still-light / int. Art. I. Chmyreva. SPb., 2000
Photographic time of Karl Bulla / Petersburg. 1903 in photographs by K.K. Bulls: catalogue, 2003
Vasily Sokornov. Specialty: views of the Crimea / Vasily Sokornov. Types of Crimea: catalogue. SPb., 2005
Living beings in light-painting representation / Dots. On the history of photography. Album. SPb., 2005
The first light painter of St. Petersburg / Ivan Bianchi - the first light painter of St. Petersburg: catalogue. SPb., 2005
Life-affirming genre / Nu. Album. SPb., 2006
Subject. Photographer about photography. SPb., 2006
About photography, Petersburg and the end of the century / Boris Smelov. Retrospective: GE catalogue, 2009
Genre: Petersburg. Album. SPb., 2011
Subjectively about photographers. Letters. St. Petersburg, 2013
Petersburg Expedition of Ivan Bianchi / Russian World: Almanac. St. Petersburg, 2014
St. Petersburg in the works of German photographers of the 19th century: catalogue. St. Petersburg, 2014
Petersburg Ivan Bianchi. Post restante. St. Petersburg, 2015

Lit.:
Photopostscriptum: catalog / int. Art. A. Borovsky, St. Petersburg, 1993
Self-Identification. Positions in St. Petersburg Art from 1970 to Today. Berlin, 1994
Die neue russische Fotografie: Catalogue. Leverkusen, Germany, 1998
The Russian Museum presents: Abstraction in Russia. XX century / Almanac. Issue. 17. Timing. St. Petersburg, 2001
Savchuk V. Conversion of art. SPb., 2001
Photography of the posterotic era / Ontology of possible worlds / Proceedings of a scientific conference under. ed. B.I. Lipsky. SPb., 2001
Black & White Petersburg 1703-2003: Catalogue. St. Petersburg, 2002
The Nude in the post-erotic Age. Das rigorose Gluck. Erste Annaerung. Hrg. Bernd Ternes und dem RG-Verein. Marburg, 2002
St. Petersburg in Black-and-White. State Russian Museum, Palace Editions, 2003
Valran V.N. Leningrad underground: painting, photography, rock music. SPb., 2003
Two waters. St. Petersburg. Album. SPb., 2003
The Russian Museum presents: Black and White Petersburg / Almanac. Issue. 45. Timing. St. Petersburg, 2003
The Russian Museum presents: Emperor Paul I. The current image of the past / Almanac. Issue. 100. Timing. SPb., 2004
Savchuk V. Philosophy of photography. SPb., 2005
Stigneev V. T. Age of photography. 1894-1994. Essays on the history of Russian photography. M., 2005
Outcrop. New Russian photography. Album. Wedge, 2006
Photo relay from Rodchenko to the present day. Pages of the history of Soviet and modern Russian photography. M., 2006
Podolsky N. Homo photos. Alexander Kitaev / Behind the lens. Essays about Petersburg photographers and photography. SPb.-M, 2008
Outpost. Photo album. M, 2012
Fotofest 2012 biennial. fine print auction. Houston, Texas, USA
Podolsky N. The artist's gene in photographic reality. Essay on artistic photography. St. Petersburg, 2013
Vasiliev S. Vocation-photographer. Chelyabinsk, 2014
Fine Arts of St. Petersburg. M, 2014

 

It might be useful to read: