591 Exhibition - Andrei Riskin

It's not really to photographer's benefit to write about oneself. There is such an abundance of people willing to talk about themselves, that shouldn't we, "guys with cameras" stick to the cameras? Well, to tell you the truth, it's not just guys and not just cameras...

I was born in a big city in Russia in a family of a graphic artist in the last years of Soviet regime, just in time to witness many strange things. As we were packing our belongings it was difficult to figure out which ones were true values, the whole country seemed to have similar doubts though... I think this experience turned out to be very important, because if you are in photography for a reason, you need to know what that reason is.



Few years after we had immigrated to US, I flew back to my immense motherland to photograph churches in rural areas several hundred miles north-east of Moscow. No matter how dramatic textured white walls against deep-blue winter skies looked, faces we saw under those skies were still more powerful. I've been photographing people ever since, both is the United States and Russia.

Besides working on assignments I spend a lot of time on my own projects, such as "Russian SF". As the name implies it's about us, both very similar and very different, members of Russian-speaking community. Since our former native land left us all way behind in time, I think i just wanted to have a record of people I now belong to. It's a work in progress, of course, because it takes time to meet so many of your new neiboughs.


My other projects are more difficult to label . “Single Mom” is a series of five straight-forward portraits of women and their children. “Old Man’s Place” is about the elderly and their caregivers. It's an exploration into the world of age and often - loneliness. It's about a condition of being physically shut off from most of what we call "normal life". It's also about a caregiver, the person who provides an ultimate end-of-life relationship, while we, children and grandchildren, are comfortably enjoying our "quality of life".

Lately i started adding voice and sound to still photography, creating so-called multimedia presentations, one of them "The Visit" is also dedicated to the elderly. Along with the forementioned images it is available for you to view at
www.riskinphoto.com
Text and photos © Andrei Riskin

I found the Single Mom series by Andrei and liked it a lot. I soon found out that he is the author of more interesting and beautiful work. Enjoy the exhibition. It is great photography.


Exhibition ended Feb 21, 2009

Andrei Riskin

Born: 1975
Lives in: San Francisco
Latest exhibition: Photoworks, San Francisco
Coming, planned exhibition: "Old man's place"
Inspiration (photographers): Cartier-Bresson, Igor Mukhin, Leibovitz, many others
Inspiration (other): J. Brodsky, O. Mandelshtam, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, A,. Levin
Film, digital or both: Film for personal work, Digital for everything else.
Homepage/contact: www.riskinphoto.com

Comments

Anonymous said…
Impressive work!!!
Anonymous said…
Excellent work!
Rhonda Boocock said…
wonderful photography! Those are the kinds of photos that make you want to keep looking and feel curious about the stories of the subjects. Thank you for sharing!
Anonymous said…
a very mature and deep work.
Anonymous said…
yes, wonderful to see.
bea