How I Love

Lyudmila Gorlova appeared on the Moscow art scene in the early 1990s. As for many of her fellow artists of the same generation, the new reality became both a difficult challenge and a kind of privilege — the decade’s dynamic socio‑political transformations demanded a renewed artistic language and instant responses to epochal shifts. Her work reflects some of the most acute issues of contemporary society such as adolescent rebellion, gender inequality, and youth culture.

How I Love (1997) is a photo novel composed of 26 images. The medium first appeared in postwar Europe but gained its greatest popularity in Latin America, where it evolved as both an adaptation of soap operas and an independent melodramatic format. In Russia, photo novels emerged in the mid1990s, briefly attaining niche popularity: they could be found both in teen magazines (Cool Girl) and subcultural journals (Ptuch). One publication specializing in photo novels was The Land of Love, which featured monthly adaptations of tragic female stories produced by the leading company in this field — the Italian firm The Best.

Gorlova deconstructs the medium’s affectedly documentary naturalism by representing a “delicate girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown”: wet hair, smeared lipstick, an evening dress, and pearls. Each image is accompanied by a line borrowed from the heroines of The Land of Love: “Even though I hate you, right now I need your tenderness,” “I’m just a little tired,” “Laugh, I won’t be offended,” and the like. The dissonance between text and image exposes the mechanisms by which desires, “proper” behavior, and feminine subjectivity are constructed. The pseudo‑emancipatory “I can do it myself” coexists with self‑blame (“I’m just hysterical”), while the language of self‑care imperceptibly merges with the rhetoric of consumption, leading to a dramatic counterpoint between the body undergoing a breakdown and the lexicon demanding flawless control and a permanent smile. Gorlova reveals how media construct the figure of the “new woman” of the late twentieth century—autonomous yet affiliated, desirable yet vulnerable.

“Feeling the need to become fashionable and modern, I take the risk of trying myself in the photo novel medium. This is a story about love—about self‑love of an ordinary Russian girl on her way to a new life. The encounter with new values was meant to make her life better. What could be more pleasant and exciting than the desire for comfort and well‑being? But suddenly, events take an unexpected turn. It is so easy to be deceived by dreams of future happiness…” — Lyudmila Gorlova

Today, when the display of one’s emotions often becomes a means of self‑capitalization on social media, Gorlova’s project takes on new relevance through exposing the internal contradictions of performative sincerity.