Getting to know the photographic practices and works of Boris Kudryakov.
Semyon Motolyants’ tour will focus one of the most important individuals in Leningrad’s unofficial culture, the writer, photographer, and artist Boris Kudryakov (Grand-Boris). His archive recently became part of Garage Archive Collection and is still subject to detailed research. Participants will see a collection of photographs made by the artist, learn about his little-known experiments with photography, and examine the elements which made up his practice.
It was in the 2000s that Semyon Motolyants first heard legends about Boris Kudryakov, who led a quiet life in an attempt to escape Soviet reality, and his photographs, in which everyday, boring objects become worthy of focused attention. This feeling of encountering the secret life of things and people, which is captured in the photo works, needs to be deciphered. In order to reveal it for yourself, you have to understand the context and adjust your optics. The discussion regarding direct or staged shoots and collages and photo books by this underground artist will explore which technological possibilities, stylistic discoveries, and everyday observations formed the visual language of Grand-Boris and why these experiments are important for contemporary artists.