Performing
the documentary
Elena
Sorokina
In:
Mutations: Perspectives on Photography (Paris Photo)
by
Chantal Pontbriand (Editor)
For
her project "Trees" (2009), Anastasia Khoroshilova invited
drama students from the "Special art school for people with
restricted physical abilities" in Moscow, asking them to
improvise on the theme of "tree" in urban spaces. Their
gestural mastery, finesse and expressiveness were then documented by
the artist in well-framed, attentive-to-composition shots, her camera
being interested in portraying the students as much as in their
performances.
Until
very recently, Khoroshilova has always worked with specific groups of
people, sometimes deliberately invoking narrative stereotypes and
cultural clichés. An orthodox monastery in Russia, a women's asylum
in Germany or the workers of the Ural Heavy Machine Building Plant -
all of them can be described as groups, communities or collectives
with a different degree of individual involvement – from the
conscious choice to a mere bad fate. Khoroshilova's subjects can be
part of the new- and old-type communities coexisting in today's
Russia. A Jewish school or an Orthodox cloister were ideologically
impossible in Soviet times. And concurrently, the name of "Uralmash"
built in the 1930s resonates today as an antiquated idea of the
exalted stakhanovite collectivity. The artist's interest in
communities relies on their dramatic current shifts: the end of
Communism naturally meant the disintegration of its main ideological
figure, the figure of “Soviet people” – defined as an ideal
multinational community to come. What are the new collective
affinities and who are the "people" today, she asks? A
nation and its citizens, a mass, a crowd, another type of imaginary
community? Looking at individuals first, Khoroshilova observes their
ways to negotiate with a collective identity of their choice or fate.
This
approach of Khoroshilova's has been described by Victor Misiano as
"existential anthropology" – an exploration of individual
experiences inside the socio-cultural forms, their habitude and their
spontaneity. At the same time, photography remains for the artist a
science of the particular, a meeting between psychology, literature
and history in a documentary portrait. Often assuming a role of a
"travelling photographer", the artist asks people if they
want "a picture taken of them". Sometimes, she goes to
people's homes, listens to their life stories, gaining a close and
intimate familiarity with her possible "models" or
"sitters". But their involvement in the production of image
is more than just posing. As a matter of fact, Khoroshilova's
"models" become her collaborators, consciously constructing
their own representation in a mutual "creative effort" with
the artist. We see, in other words, how her "models" choose
to be seen; the "reality" and "fiction" of the
image are constructed by them, and remain under shared control with
the artist. At the Uralmash Plant, for example, the workers created
entire compositions for the photographs, choosing a mise-en-scène,
lighting, and the objects featured.
In
some ways, Khoroshilova's approach is indebted to the 19th century
movement of Peredvizhniki (Wanderers or Itinerants) – not to their
heroic "national" legend, but their genuine interest in
people and surroundings as much as their takes on "realism".
Founded in 1870, "The Association of Travelling Art Exhibits",
abbreviated as "Peredvizhniki", was an artist cooperative
driven by the idea of “bringing art to people" and discovering
this very "people" – one of the chief archetypes of the
Russian art, in perpetual (re)-construction. This interest in models
of contemporary realities is also characteristic for Khoroshilova's
direct generational affiliation, the phenomenon called
"postdiaspora". Far from being a homogenous movement,
postdiaspora displays a specific duality of connection-separation
with Russia as a subject of investigation. If the previous diasporic
generation, of which Ilya Kabakov is the most renowned
representative, was engaged in self-mythologization, facing problems
of the representational identity, for the post-diaspora, to be or not
to be a "Russian artist" was a matter of choice. Educated
in the West, these artists had a wide spectrum of possibilities to
design their "Russianness" – research it, perform it or
invent it anew from the most eclectic parts available, or, as in
Khoroshilova's case, to engage in "participant observation".
As
an engaged observer, Khoroshilova captures people not by surprise but
in a considered pose, self-aware and taking time to face the
spectators' gaze. This calm, unhurried temporality of a good old
studio photography – close to the pictorial in some ways - deeply
opposes the momentariness of a reportage – hunting and catching the
moment. For Khoroshilova, the main question is what happens before
and after the image? How can an image be justified and what can an
image do? Going, for example, to sites of conflict long after a
tragedy had happened, she meets people left alone by the mainstream
press, facing themselves and their traumatic memories. For the
project "Old News" in Beslan - a place radically
transformed by an unprecedented hostage taking tragedy in 2004,
Khoroshiliva photographed women who lived both – the tragedy itself
and the stress-time imposed by the media. Their portraits taken in
2010 are alien to both, photojournalism and the all too familiar
psychologizing portraiture; the artist gives these women time to
recover and redress in front of the camera, to be in charge of their
own image, composed and self-possessed.
Always
negotiating with her subjects the terms and conditions of "imaging"
– the sense of disclosure and right to opacity – Khoroshilova can
be seen among the artists trying to reinvent the documentary practice
today. Avoiding any illustrations of concepts, she explores the space
between the straight documentary and a staged tableau, and all the
representational and performative complexity this space offers. But
what ultimately remains is the collective effort in "making"
an image, the agency of the sitter, the magic of his presence and the
new sense of "realism" the work of Khoroshilova touches
upon.