Boris Savelev – Retrospective

Exhibition: July 11-August 27, 2003

Boris Savelev is not only one of the most important and well-known photographers working in Russia today; his work belongs with the first truly autonomous photography done in Russia since the 1920s. Boris Savelev came out of an informal group of artists called "the seventies". The 1970s are often considered a time of political and social stagnation in the Soviet Union. For photography, it was an important time. Political repression of art – unless it was officially sanctioned State Art - meant that there were few chances to exhibit personal work. Most artistic exchanges took place during meetings of informal photography clubs where the "amateur" photographers could display their work.

In the Soviet underground, photography was a passion, not a profession. Everyone worked in black and white, using Hungarian paper bought on the black market or obtained by friends whose ‘official artist’ status gave them access to State stores. They showed their work in each other’s apartments, and made only one or two prints of each image. Often, independent photographers worked for various state enterprises doing engineering work or translation. After training as an engineer, Savelev worked professionally as a commercial photographer, but kept his own creative work separate. It was hard for him to imagine being supported by his art.

These independent photographers looked with a jaundiced eye at their ‘avant garde’ predecessors. For Savelev, most of this work was "uninteresting. In so strongly rejecting the work of the Soviet artists who came before them, these "seventies" photographers were compelled to create something new.

Savelev’s style can be defined by a series of negations: it is not utopian, it isn't documentary, it is not overtly political or directly symbolic. It isn't very concerned with the human condition or nature. In combining the gritty cityscapes of Russia with a cool formalism Savelev has managed to make photographs which are both funny (in a sly way) and serious (without the ponderous quality of so much European work). Savelev’s work is not subject driven. We are not expected to sympathize with the people who appear in his photographs. He is a "straight" photographer, capturing images rather than posing them, and concerned first and foremost with formal values. The environment around him becomes a springboard into a rough urban poetry. He does a lot of shooting in the early morning, when there is raking light and interesting shadow. His compositional methods have been very influential; it is quite common now to find Savelev-like work done by other Russian photographers.

Savelev’s earliest color work, during the first period of perestroika, was shot on slide film, and had to be sent outside Russia for development. As one of Russia’s best known photographers, Savelev now has all the equipment and raw materials necessary for any kind of printing, and does work in collotype, ambrotype, tintype, and lith-print techniques. He is widely recognized as a technical master, and teaches printing techniques extensively in Europe.

Savelev’s extraordinary photographic work has earned him a place in major international collections worldwide, among them, the Corcoran Galley in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Staatsgallerie of Stuttgart, the Saarland Museum in Saarbrucken, Germany, our Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and many other major institutions.