Forms: Leningrad-Paper-Wood-Construction-Supply-Distribution, 1988
Unique vintage photocollage with red linen, newspaper clippings, and gelatin silver print
Handmade by the artist, signed, dated on verso
19 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. (49.6 x 39.4 cm)
“Titarenko expose (personnellement) à partir de 1983 à Leningrad (aujourd’hui Saint Pétersbourg), à Paris en 1988 (galerie Drouart) et participe à des expositions de groupe à Saint Pétersbourg encore, avec la série d’images Nomenklatura des signes. Il dit, à propos de ce travail: ‘Pendant 73 ans de son existence, le pouvoir de la nomenklatura en U.R.S.S. s’est transformé en une autre nomenklatura des signes qui ont été inventés par la bureaucratie pour placer la vie humaine entre paren- thèses de l’idéologie. L’absurde délirant a fait dispa- raître la véritable signification des choses: le magasin de viande se réduit au signe du magasin.’”
Larousse Dictionnaire Mondial de la Photographie.
Untitled (KVG 425), 1987
From the series Nomenklatura of Signs (1986-1991)
Vintage collage with red linen, newspapers, gouache, and gelatin silver print
Signed and dated on verso
33 x 41 cm
Titarenko’s first major body of work, Nomenklatura of Signs is a biting critique of the Soviet bureaucracy known as the “nomenklatura,” whose imposition of visual propaganda upon the Soviet psyche deprived citizens of their individuality and authenticity. Titarenko mocks this dehumanizing propaganda in his collages and photomontages by depicting the Soviet subject as an assemblage of prosaic signs and symbols. Inspired by the traditions of Dada and Russian avant-garde, Titarenko poetically destroys and recreates meaning from these signs in his collages by combining torn-up portraits, fragments from political speeches, and scraps of red linen. Today, works from the series can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University; the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; and the Centre National de l’Audovisuel, Luxembourg, among other museums. In 2020, the series was published by Damiani in the book Nomenklatura of Signs.
Untitled (?!), 1988
Unique vintage gelatin silver photomontage
Mount 20 x 23 cm
Signed and dated in pencil on verso
Soviet Patriot, 1987
From the series Nomenklatura of Signs (1986-1991)
Vintage collage with gelatin silver print and red linen
Signed and dated on verso
22 x 23.5 cm
Nomenklatura of Signs collages were published by Aperture in the 1990 magazine coinciding with the exhibition Photostroika: New Soviet Photography, which toured museums in the United States for three years. Titarenko drew on the aesthetics of Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and other artists of the early 20th-century Russian avant-garde. Working in secret, he conceived the series as a way to translate the visual reality of Soviet life into a language that expressed its absurdity, and to expose the Communist regime as an oppressive system that converted citizens into mere signs.
Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Crowd 1), St. Petersburg, 1991-1992
From the series City of Shadows (1991-1994)
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
45.5 x 46 cm
Artist Proof 3 of 5
Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Crowd 1) is Titarenko’s most iconic image and served as the cover image for his first major monograph, The City is a Novel (Damiani, 2015). With its powerful diagonal composition and extraordinary tonal range, this photograph succeeds in expressing in a single frame Titarenko’s metaphor of people as “shadows” in the history of 20th-century Russia. Furthermore, the image not only captures the singular and harrowing experience of life in St. Petersburg in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the USSR but also evokes the trauma wrought by revolutions, war, and the other trials that people have faced throughout the twentieth century. This image is charged with both angst and with deep empathy. By transcending time, it has become symbolic of human suffering in different places and periods throughout history.
Crowd on Sredniy Prospect (Crowd 3), St. Petersburg, 1992
From the series City of Shadows (1991-1994)
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
22 x 22 cm
Artist Proof 2 of 5
In Crowd 3, Titarenko captures a crowd of people on one of the major avenues on Vasilevsky Island in St. Petersburg, Sredniy Prospect. Here, the gradation in Titarenko’s tones renders the crowd uniquely haunting and ambiguous, seemingly moving both toward and away from the lens simultaneously, darkening almost to black in the farthest corner and set off dramatically against the near-white of the city street. The result is a heightened sense of anxiety, in which humanity seems not just to blur together but even to disappear.
Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Variant 3 Crowd 2), St. Petersburg, 1992
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled dated, and editioned in pencil on verso
32 x 32 cm
Edition 2 of 10
“People pushed, yelled, threw punches. Handicapped people were trampled. It was like a scene from hell . . . What guided me in constructing this ensemble [City of Shadows] was once again a musical piece, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 2. As I watched the ghastly scene at the metro entrance, the opening melody from the first movement overwhelmed my hesitations and freed me from doubt, from self-interrogation, and from a childlike fear, if not to say a sense of shame. It allowed me to confront the furious, menacing crowd.”
Entrance, Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Heads), St. Petersburg, 1991-1992
From the series City of Shadows (1991-1994)
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
40.5 x 40 cm
Edition 3 of 10
This crowd image is distinctive among Titarenko’s crowd images in that the focus is a mass of people not on the steps outside Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station, with the city storefronts as a backdrop, but pushing into its entrance, framed at a slight angle that emphasizes the overwhelming size and movement of the rushing crowd. The square format of Titarenko’s medium-format Hasselblad camera further intensifies the feeling of tumult and claustrophobia, as does Titarenko’s distinctive long exposure technique, which blurs the individual commuters into a dark cloud in which individual heads are just barely distinguishable. This dark mass of individuals is set off by the gleaming, almost garish light of the station entrance.
Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Variant 2 Crowd 2), St. Petersburg, 1992
From the series City of Shadows (1991-1994)
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
46 x 45.5 cm
Edition 3 of 5
The City of Shadows series was Titarenko’s instinctive response to an atmosphere of deterioration and despair unfolding in St. Petersburg, the years immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. Through the method of long exposure, Titarenko transformed the swarm of Russian people pushing their way through a metro station, into a ghost-like haze. Reflecting a decade later, Titarenko wrote that “all these people conditioned by propagandistic models of representation, a palpable ensemble of smiling faces, were becoming wandering shadows.”
Vasileostrovskaya Metro Station (Variant 4 Crowd 2), St. Petersburg, 1992
From the series City of Shadows (1991-1994)
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
21 x 21 cm
Edition 3 of 5
In his crowd photographs, Titarenko unleashed the expressive potentials of long exposure, demonstrating his mastery of the artistic method. Through darkroom toning and bleaching, he highlights specific elements in the scene. Particularly stirring are the pair of shoes — a frozen calm amid a procession of shadows.
Evening Smog (asking for a cigarette), St. Petersburg, 1995
Unique vintage gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated in pencil by the artist on verso
21.6 x 21.6 cm
White Dresses, St. Petersburg, 1995
Unique toned gelatin silver print, handmade in the darkroom by the artist
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned in pencil by the artist on verso
41 x 41 cm
Edition 2 of 10
“Titarenko’s stirring images are portraits of mortality as much as they are evocations of memory. In them we see that the traces we leave in space and time are faint, yet nonetheless indelible.”
Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times
Nailya Alexander Gallery is excited to announce our participation in the 24th edition of Paris Photo, the world’s leading art fair dedicated to photography, taking place from Thursday, November 11 to Sunday, November 14, 2021, at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris.
This year, we present a solo exhibition of the artist Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962, St. Petersburg), focusing on his groundbreaking work “Nomenklatura of Signs” (1986–1991), a series of photomontages and collages inspired by the Russian avant-garde that depicts the absurd and darkly comic reality of Soviet life; and his subsequent series “City of Shadows” (1991–1994), wherein Titarenko unleashed the expressive potential of long exposure in capturing the suffering and anxiety that ensued during the collapse of the USSR. Titarenko’s haunting images of ghostlike crowds have become iconic today. Our exhibition is especially timely as it coincides with the 30th anniversary, in 2021, of the fall of the Soviet Union, and also includes some of Titarenko’s more recent work, including photographs of New York. Titarenko crafts each print by hand in his darkroom, producing a rich, subtle range of tones that renders each print unique. Photographs from his New York series are especially notable for his application of partial bleaching and selective selenium and gold toning.
“Alexey Titarenko: City of Shadows,” retrospective exhibition was held in 2020 at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. Titarenko’s photographs can be found in such museum collections as the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Columbus Museum of Art; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Denver; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of the City of New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the George Eastman House, Rochester; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the European House of Photography, Paris; the Musée Réattu, Arles; the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; the Centre National de l'Audiovisuel, Dudelange, Luxemburg; Rosphoto Museum, St. Petersburg; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; and the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, among other museums.
Nailya Alexander Gallery can be found in booth C29. We will host a book signing for Titarenko’s monograph Nomenklatura of Signs (Damiani, 2020), on Saturday, November 13 at 3:00 PM. For those who are not able to visit the fair in person, we hope you will enjoy our exhibition online through Tuesday, November 30.
