crossings

Andrey Gordasevich

January 29 — February 13, 2014
Triumph gallery

In any city at any instant, people are meeting. Sometimes these meetings are planned, sometimes they are chance, as people’s paths cross. In any such crossing it is its tone that counts. From this, a general feeling of the city is formed.

In Saint-Petersburg there is one more crossing, which drives me: the crossing of the present and the past. That is why I am mixing my meetings with fragments of the past. In the story, a visual chronology is used. This means that the sequence of the pictures is defined by the visual preferences of the author, and not by the time of their creation. For documentary purposes, the date and exact time are indicated for every photo. All names and stories are real. Any similarities with fiction are unintended.

Andrey Gordasevich

Crossings
2013
Photograph, laser print
50 × 100 cm

In Saint-Petersburg there is one more crossing, which drives me: the crossing of the present and the past. That is why I am mixing my meetings with fragments of the past. In the story, a visual chronology is used. This means that the sequence of the pictures is defined by the visual preferences of the author, and not by the time of their creation. For documentary purposes, the date and exact time are indicated for every photo. All names and stories are real. Any similarities with fiction are unintended.

Andrey Gordasevich

The White Nights are a special state of the soul from which there is no salvation and no delight. Because it’s forever captured within that ne’er-do-well, interim, neither-night-nor-day space, and eternally fated to wander, reaching neither heaven nor hell. The White Nights give Petersburg its special character.

This small album is devoted to our former capital city. What makes it a city? Petersburg Prospect — a straight line drawn by Peter the Great on the map, running from nowhere to nowhere, around which nocturnal moths, astonishing and strange characters whirl about. The People of the White Nights is the working title for a new series by Andrey Gordasevich which has developed into a book, Crossings. Nevsky and its surroundings are the main locations for the shoots.

To this day we compare everything with 1913. That imaginary starting point creates a shaky confidence in there having been a time when "gymnasium girls" were "rosy-cheeked", "priests" were "white", "sunsets" were "crimson", and the "impossible" was "possible". This imagined era of White Guard romance opens up a key to a phantom identity titled "Petersburgers". The graphic blots of this mythic epoch can be seen within the margins of this volume.

The White Nights are a vertical of temporal stagnation. Nevsky is a horizontal of placelessness. Crossings arise where they meet. The new book by Andrey Gordasevich is an author’s drawing of a cosmos in which it’s impossible to map precise coordinates.

Mikhail Sidlin