Georgy Kolosov. Smoke of Homeland by Konstantin Chemeris
(to the release of the photoalbum "Smoke")
Smoke is one of the most metaphor-intensive words in Russian. In the age of the wood stove the smoke of homeland, signifying for a traveller the ending of a tiresome journey, was sweet indeed.
In XX century Russia the Smoke of Homeland was sweet, perhaps, solely to those who set this Homeland to fire. The unabated afterglow of that arson sharpens the memory of the heart, a memory, which an artist free of nostalgia can express as nothing else but pain.
The album itself got into my hands under rather symbolic circumstances. On 23 Sept. 2021 - a sensation of sensations - in the prim and proper Tretyakov Gallery (Engineering Building) there was the first opening of a photographer's personal exhibition! - "Nikolai Andreyev - a master of pictorialism". The reason being that one year prior to that the custodian, the youngest son of the celebrity of the world's great salons from Serpukhov, Sergey Nikolayevich Andreyev (from Pushchino) donated the collection in its entirety to the Tretyakov Gallery. The condition of the donation was that there be a personal exhibition with a catalogue. (Here, it's pleasant to note that today the provincial Serpukhov and Pushchino still remain a photographic asset of the country-wide magnitude.)
...When after the opening came to its close, Chemeris started handing out the new album to his subscribers, and I asked if I could have a glance at it, just for a minute. And... so indecently did I go wow about it, that I got this rather pricy edition for free, accompanied with... a valid request to write a review.
Not half a year has passed...
(To what extent "Smoke" is close to me can be concluded from the mere notice that in G.Kolosov's album "Series" (georgiykolosov.ru) there's "Smoke of Time", and for 10 years the negatives have been waiting to be printed, containing altogether surrealist "Time of Smoke".)
... The first thing that catches your eye when opening the album is that what you are holding in your hands is an artwork by itself. The textured paper of a slightly warm tone, the images of intentionally variable sizes in the layout; the pictures themselves hold none of those black or white holes characteristic of photo-albums; all of it - monochrome painting consisting of (G.K. has a peculiar weakness for them) immaculate tonal compositions. The cover is filled with a smashingly symbolic shot - a road vanishing in the smoke, from the edge of it a sign on the post with a diagonal crossing out the name "Pushchino". (Before the 1990s it was a spectacular city of scientists, the Dubna of Soviet biology.) Again, it is worthy to remember the ancestral curse of any photography outside the studio, especially landscape photography. That is uncontrolled detail all around, every now and then rendering a harmoniously composed shot impossible, when remote rubbish gets into the significance of the subject matter. That is why landscape photographers love the fog. In this respect smoke acts as a separator of planes, as much more effective as soot particles are darker than those of water. Not only does the "soot" help to easily build up the composition, it also adds mysterious suspense to the space dissolving in smoke.
The book consists of three parts with an invariable mood: Smoke as such (45 pictures), Autumn (35 pictures) and Winter (16 pictures), naturally flowing from one to another.
... All three astound one by their absence of people. The Smoke part has two exceptions: on page 23 two moms, nonchalantly, are pushing their prams, talking, while a boy around 10 years of age is sitting nearby, as if absent, preoccupied, his tired bicycle dropped by the bench. And - p.37 - to the same road sign from out of nowhere a young woman is walking up, knee deep in the grass, with her head low.
The symbol of Smoke (p.25) - a strange arch in the thin white wall, the space behind it is almost overlapped by the thick dark crown of a tree; to the right of the arch - an old bulletin board with ragged messages... No one to read them, nowhere to go...
The beginning of Autumn is still in smoke, as it were: a burly elderly woman with a basket has come to pick up windfalls from under a massive apple tree. Then, a vigorous, judging by the windows, abandoned building of the Pushchino mansion, a weed-filled pond, etc. An explosion - elaborately portrayed arches of the ruined Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ...
And following it unfolds, moving on from Autumn into Winter, the most sensitive topic for me - "abandoned house".
If sacrosanctity of the cathedral is understood by anyone, then sacrosanctity of the house just doesn't come to our mind. At that, our entire life saturates, permeates everything in it from the cellar to the roof... There was a time when in every peasant's hut icons shone from their cases and... it is not their fault that none of the inhabitants ever taken a hold of the Gospels... The result is obvious. And, all things considered, it's impossible not to consider what amount of sorrowful toil, humiliation, lawlessness these dwellings have seen...
A lonely snowed under large cross by the bank and a strange path leading to the deserted river open up the last set of subjects, where a different kind of houses, are covered with more and more snow. Not a single chimney smokes...
Conclusion. "Smoke" by Konstantin Chemeris is more than an event in our Photography. After-war fathers predicted: some said that the territory of Russia would shrink to the Urals, others - even to the borders of the Moscow Kingdom, and after that the country will start living a life free of lies and violence. Konstantin Chemeris's album "Smoke" is a most powerful visual prophecy about Russia from everything I have seen around in life. And I can only guess what price the artist with a camera had to pay for it.
Thank you, Konstantin!
Georgy Kolosov October-December 2021
Translated from Russian: Andrey Prokipchuk
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Konstantin Chemeris. Photobook “Smoke”
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