Alexander Lapin

Lapin was born in Moscow in 1945. He lives and works in Moscow, where he teaches the history of photography. He has been a member of the Board for State Awards in Art under the President of Russia since 1992.

Lapin is an interesting case. His work bridges the cool formalism of the "seventies" group with an emotive, documentary photography of ordinary lives. He can take very elegant photographs of abstracted line and volume, but he has also done a wonderful series of the other kind of lines – the human kind where people are waiting – or moving very slowly as fast as they can. He is funny too – he says of his photographic series Love in Moscow, "They don’t just kiss in Paris!" Lapin’s lovers are not fashionable or even attractive, but they are lovers nonetheless. This photographer’s decisive moments belong to the people in his photographs.

Selected Exhibitions

1985 One-man Show, Malaya Gruzinskaya, Moscow, USSR

1986 One-man Show, Ottersberg, Germany

1987 Group Show, Oxford, UK -Group Show, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia

1988 Group Show, Helsinki, Finland 1988 "Contemporary Soviet Photography"

Museut for Foto Kunst, Odense, Denmark

Group Show, Paris, France

Die Zeitgenossische Photographie in der Sowjetunion, Museum of Photography, Lausanne, Switzerland Group Show, London, UK

One-man Show, Vadim Sidur's Studio, Moscow, USSR

1989 - 1990 Group Show, Sweden

1991 "Changing Reality", Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

1992 "Old New Photography", Contemporary Art Center, Moscow, Russia