Nicholas Hughes
Alexey Titarenko
At Dusk (Yard), St. Petersburg, 1996
Alexey Titarenko
Backyard Passages (Thoroughfare), St. Petersburg, 1997
Alexey Titarenko
Pensioner returning home from the market, St. Petersburg, 1997
Alexey Titarenko
Evening Smog (Asking for a cigarette), St. Petersburg, 1995
Alexey Titarenko
Trees in Snow, St. Petersburg, 1996
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sea, Russia (dog on vehicle), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sea, Russia (dogs and children), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sea, Russia (man on snowy road), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sea, Russia (dog with bag), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sea, Russia (boy and dog), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Signilskar, Finland (White rabbit in forest), 1974
Pentti Sammallahti
St. Petersburg, Russia (dogs and truck), 2011
Pentti Sammallahti
Solovki, White Sear, Russia (two dogs and bird on box), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Moscow, Russia (broken down car), 1980
Pentti Sammallahti
Jyskyjärvi, Karelia, Russia (dogs and bridge), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Petrohan, Bulgaria (snowy trees), 2003
Pentti Sammallahti
Paanajarvi, Karelia, Russia (dog and bird), 1992
Pentti Sammallahti
Helsinki, Finland (broken ice), 2000
Pentti Sammallahti
Helsinki, Finland (ducks on broken ice), 1973
Pentti Sammallahti
Helsinki, Finland (birds on branch), 2002
Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to celebrate the upcoming holiday season with Winter Tales, opening Tuesday, November 17 at 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704. The exhibition runs through Tuesday, December 22, 2015. Gallery hours are 11 AM – 6 PM, Tuesday through Saturday, and by appointment.
Winter Tales features the work of four contemporary photographers from northern Europe and Russia, all of whom have dedicated significant portions of their careers to capturing the singular beauty and poetry of the region’s harsh climate. The exhibition includes the St. Petersburg cityscapes of Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962, St. Petersburg); photographs from northern Russia, Finland, and Bulgaria by Pentti Sammallahti (b. 1950, Helsinki); panoramas and unique paper positives from Belarusian photographer Igor Savchenko (b. 1962, Minsk); and selected large-format snowscapes from British photographer Nicholas Hughes, (b. 1963, Liverpool) whose work is included in the new Harvard University Press publication Photography and the Art of Chance.
A shared concern with the unique environmental qualities of the northern winter, as well as a commitment to craft and fine printmaking, unite the four photographers’ distinct bodies of work. In Titarenko’s images of St. Petersburg, figures and façades disappear behind a windswept scrim of snow and mist, the atmosphere made manifest by the photographer’s characteristic long exposures and meticulous hand-toning. Snow in the city has the quality of a palimpsest, recording and erasing the footprints and tire tracks that serve as signs of human life; while in Hughes’ photographs, it is so untouched as to appear eternal and abstract. Sammallahti’s masterful gelatin-silver prints, fruits of his travels through the remote villages of the far north, are animated by the lived experience of the season – as are Savchenko’s panoramas, which call to mind the winter landscapes of Brueghel. His “paper shots” offer a more intimate, immediate point of view. Each print is a unique positive image, the paper exposed in-camera and processed to reveal an icy step or a fragile sapling.