Virtual tour: about fashion and style in 9 photo expositions | Articles | Photo, video, optics

No mat­ter how sad it may sound, there is very lit­tle left until the end of sum­mer. If you live in Moscow and are won­der­ing what to do in the last days of August, we offer you a solu­tion. And we invite res­i­dents of oth­er cities to a vir­tu­al pho­to tour.

Until August 29, as part of the Fash­ion and Style in Pho­tog­ra­phy 2021 fes­ti­val, 9 expo­si­tions are pre­sent­ed at the Mul­ti­me­dia Art Muse­um.

Soviet film poster 1950–1980s

This expo­si­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to film posters of cult Sovi­et films: “Girls”, “Irony of Fate”, “Sta­tion for Two” and oth­er mas­ter­pieces.

Each poster is a true work of art. Bright col­ors and images of movie char­ac­ters close to the heart in an unusu­al incar­na­tion do not go unno­ticed.

All posters are orig­i­nal, the authors are well-known artists. For exam­ple, posters for the films “Striped Flight”, “Oper­a­tion Y”, “Car­ni­val Night” were cre­at­ed by Mikhail Kheifits, who, for his cre­ative work, became the author of more than 200 film adver­tise­ments.

Adver­tis­ing poster for the fea­ture film “Vol­ga-Vol­ga”, E. Pozd­nev, 1949

And the posters for the cult films Aibolit-66, Kin-dza-dza and Kill the Drag­on were cre­at­ed by Leonid Bog­danov, a lead­ing artist in the film adver­tis­ing indus­try of the 1980s.

Industrial Italy 1920–1960s

The next exhi­bi­tion was born thanks to the Ital­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Giro­lamo Bombel­li — for forty years he pho­tographed the largest indus­tri­al sites in Italy. Thus, he cap­tured the path of the coun­try’s indus­tri­al­iza­tion, as well as the for­ma­tion and flour­ish­ing of the leg­endary brands Bas­set­ti, Mar­ti­ni & Rossi, etc.

pho­to by Giro­lamo Bombel­li

Have you ever thought that in the dis­tant 30s of the 20th cen­tu­ry, like this, in an unre­mark­able room, women of absolute­ly dif­fer­ent ages sat in white aprons marked with the let­ter M and man­u­al­ly packed Mar­ti­ni bot­tles?

Sparkling wine pack­ag­ing work­shop, pho­to by Giro­lamo Bombel­li

Pay atten­tion to the inte­ri­or: noth­ing super­flu­ous. One can under­stand how sim­ple and at the same time dif­fi­cult the pro­duc­tion was for the work­ers: there is no vari­ety of equip­ment famil­iar to us, the pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties look very sim­ple, a lot depend­ed on man­u­al labor.

Emmy America. Crazy it right away

Hon­est­ly, it was this expo­si­tion that made me come to MAMM. And the expec­ta­tions were ful­ly jus­ti­fied.

Emmy Amer­i­ca is a young Russ­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er. By the age of 24, she has already worked with Vogue and L’of­fi­ciel.

If we are talk­ing about “rec­og­niz­able style”, then this can def­i­nite­ly be attrib­uted to the Emmy. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er breaks the mold, com­bin­ing com­mer­cial and artis­tic in his work.

pho­to Emmy Amer­i­ca

The girl cap­tures the every­day life of dif­fer­ent time peri­ods, embell­ish­ing or even exag­ger­at­ing some ele­ments and details. At the same time, she man­ages to main­tain the right atmos­phere and not escape real­i­ty.

Here, for exam­ple, are pho­tographs from “the same wed­ding”, where the match­mak­er usu­al­ly col­lects mon­ey for a ran­som, and the bride must be kid­napped at the end of the event. Old­er rel­a­tives do not under­stand what is hap­pen­ing, because of the amount of alco­hol they drink, young peo­ple are frankly bored, and some­where in the cor­ner with tears in their eyes sits a girl who has faith­ful­ly and devot­ed­ly loved her fiancé since school.

pho­to Emmy Amer­i­ca

With the help of cer­tain details, pho­tographs are trans­formed from the vul­gar half-blurred shots of a drunk pho­tog­ra­ph­er that a new­ly­wed cou­ple could get, into shots that would grace the spread of any fash­ion mag­a­zine.

And this is how deli­cious­ly the pho­tog­ra­ph­er man­ages to cap­ture the attrib­ut­es of the 2000s: clear, one might even say graph­ic curls, a flip phone, bead­ed bracelets and bright nail pol­ish.

pho­to Emmy Amer­i­ca

Please note that the frames show not only mod­els with per­fect fig­ures, but also ordi­nary men and women. The pic­tures are still styl­ish and atmos­pher­ic. Per­haps the pho­tog­ra­ph­er suc­ceeds, thanks to the film cam­era, which is her indis­pens­able tool.

pho­to Emmy Amer­i­ca

It is worth vis­it­ing this expo­si­tion to under­stand that fash­ion and style are not only in per­fect facial fea­tures and chis­eled fig­ures.

“There is only one goal here – to deliver entertainment”

But­lins is a chain of Eng­lish hol­i­day cen­ters that has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the world of pho­to post­cards. By the way, the all-inclu­sive option also orig­i­nat­ed here, it was invent­ed by the founder of the net­work, Bil­ly But­lin.

In 1965, he decid­ed to update the image of his hotels and turned to the pio­neer of col­or pho­tog­ra­phy, John Haydn, who had found­ed his own post­card com­pa­ny eleven years ear­li­er.

That’s how bright were the Eng­lish post­cards and with them the fourth expo­si­tion of the muse­um. If boo­gie-woo­gie motifs are close to your heart, then you will def­i­nite­ly like these shots.

The But­lins Ocean Hotel in Salt­dean by David Noble

The past, com­bined with bright col­ors and hap­py peo­ple, warms the heart — it’s nice to know that decades ago peo­ple enjoyed their hol­i­days, blissed out and chilled with all inclu­sive, just like we do now in the dis­tant Turk­ish or Caribbean side.

But­lins Pull­he­ly. Train. Panoram­ic View, David Noble

“It will be very con­ve­nient lat­er to shoot a film,” one of the vis­i­tors remarks.

Elmar Lud­wig, Dance Hall “Old Era”

Erwin Olaf. Shanghai — Palm Springs

The Dutch pho­tog­ra­ph­er ana­lyzes the prob­lems of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion — lone­li­ness, inequal­i­ty, the desire to appear, not to be.

This is per­haps the most suc­cess­ful expo­si­tion in terms of atmos­phere. First­ly, the pic­tures are so detailed and col­or­ful that some­times it seems that we have not a pho­to at all, but paint­ings.

Sec­ond­ly, most of the scenes in the pic­tures are very dra­mat­ic, and the atmos­phere in the exhi­bi­tion hall plays along with these sto­ries: the lights are dimmed, only the works them­selves are well illu­mi­nat­ed, and some sounds come from afar, as if one of the char­ac­ters in the scenes is call­ing us. Indeed, if we go a lit­tle fur­ther, we will stum­ble upon a cor­ri­dor, the walls of which are dec­o­rat­ed with video works. The heroes of the sto­ries cry out to us: “Hear me,” “Love me,” “Hug me,” they say.

The actions of the peo­ple cap­tured on the frames are rather restrained, but despite this, the plots, some of which are rep­re­sent­ed by sev­er­al pic­tures, unfold before us a whole sto­ry that we can under­stand with­out words.

“Farewell”, Erwin Olaf, 2018

Grodno city cats

Pho­tog­ra­phers Natalya Bog­danovich and Sergey Pushkin took two years to work on this series.

The expo­sure is small, all the pic­tures are pre­sent­ed in black and white and they are very con­trast­ing: some of them are quite dif­fi­cult to see. We can say that such sto­ries are more suit­able for real con­nois­seurs.

“No, I’m not impressed at all,” the woman whis­pered into her friend’s ear.

In any case, it is worth tak­ing a look in per­son and find­ing out if you are among these cen­tiles and whether you like this mood.

Bill Cunningham. Fashion on catwalks and sidewalks

Very soon, the con­tin­u­a­tion of the cult TV series “Sex and the City” will hit the cin­e­ma screens. Do you remem­ber the beau­ty Ker­ry Brad­shaw with her incred­i­ble out­fits? Leop­ard print, a fur coat com­plete with san­dals in the height of sum­mer and hand­bags of all shapes and col­ors — about the same atmos­phere reigns in the pic­tures of the leg­endary Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham.

Bill Cun­ning­ham

Gen­der and age are not impor­tant here — every­one can show their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty as they want.

Bill Cun­ning­ham

This series of 150 shots is an unde­ni­able trib­ute to five decades of high-end and street fash­ion in New York.

Bill Cun­ning­ham, Anna Win­tour, 1980s

Frank Horvat. Bestiary

A clas­sic of world pho­tog­ra­phy and a great friend of MAMM, Frank Hor­vat passed away last fall at the age of 92.

The exhi­bi­tion “Bes­tiary” is “the result of Hor­vat’s “romance” with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, as he wrote in his essay for the exhi­bi­tion.”

Per­haps to say that the pic­tures are real­ly unique is to say noth­ing.

Frank Hor­vat

Many of them are filled with a dra­mat­ic sto­ry — look­ing at them, you real­ize how far we are from the ani­mal world, that they live their own spe­cial free life, which in turn can scare a per­son who is absolute­ly not adapt­ed to such con­di­tions. This motif is read through some gloomi­ness of the pho­tographs, which fright­ens and delights at the same time.

Frank Hor­vat

Frank Hor­vat

How­ev­er, the expo­si­tion itself does not quite cor­re­spond to this sto­ry: it is very light in the hall and, as such, no gen­er­al atmos­phere is cre­at­ed.

Eton. Gentlemen’s School

I remem­ber a time when almost every teenag­er dreamed of an Eng­lish board­ing school: rich par­ents who forced you to go to a pri­vate school, a cas­tle instead of an ordi­nary gray build­ing, a strict but sophis­ti­cat­ed uni­form and a track­suit with its snow-white polo shirts and long white knee-highs.

Sure­ly all this was inspired by the Har­ry Pot­ter films, which in the 2010s was at the peak of pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Ana­tol Sloan, The Boys Go to Class

Eton was found­ed under King Hen­ry VI in 1440. There were only 70 stu­dents at that time. Today the school has 1290 stu­dents, 70 of them are tra­di­tion­al­ly roy­al schol­ar­ship hold­ers with free tuition and full board in accor­dance with the will of Hen­ry VI.

If you, like me, are a fan of the charm of British edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, then you will def­i­nite­ly appre­ci­ate this exhi­bi­tion, which cap­tures the his­to­ry of the col­lege from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The shots are real­ly very atmos­pher­ic and it would be great to see them in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more styl­ized expo­si­tion.