"For this kind of work - from pride tells me Ildar, pointing to the image worker puts in the crazy geometric figure bricks under the burning sun Uzbek - it would not be ashamed or Cartier-Bresson or Rodchenko.
Penson - son, Pen. Last name for the young artist more than talking, because native Vitebsk Max Penson, just like another, more famous for his countryman Marc Chagall - disciple Yehuda or George Pena - school art teacher, through which a humble small-town Vitebsk ever entered into the world art history.
Max was born in 1891, and in 1914, when Belarus began pogroms against the Jews, the family moved to Central Asia, the city of Kokand. There he worked as a teacher of drawing and painting at a local school. Then, somehow got his first camera, took a few pictures in the local newspaper, and then, even in the early 20's, he was invited to Tashkent newspaper Pravda Vostoka.
Reporter
"Penson did reports - says Ildar Galiev. - He walked around the city, shooting scenes, people, signs of an emerging new society, a new city. So he did all his shots, including the most famous -" Uzbek Madonna ".
"Uzbek women, nursing her baby - this image was then a true revolution, taking into account prevailed in Uzbekistan at the time harsh Islamic law - continues to gallery owner. - In this artist-photographer could easily be stoned, as telling his daughter Dina Penson, often with him and actually happened. "
Penson reportage shots, many of which do really in just such difficult circumstances, have won him fame not only in Uzbekistan but throughout the Union.
Photos of his have come to occupy top places in all-Union exhibitions, appeared on the cover of the famous Ogonyok. And once a large and beautiful magazine USSR in Construction "was entirely made up of images Max Penson - despite the fact that in this magazine have worked all the luminaries of Soviet photography in those years headed by Rodchenko and Lissitzky.
A "Uzbek Madonna", which was already telling Ildar in 1937 came at the World Exhibition in Paris, where he was awarded the Gold Medal.
Classical Heritage
Gradually reportage shots became more and more artistic, and newsman, reporter became more and more to remember that initially it was really an artist. After all, even the name "Uzbek Madonna" refers to the values of the old classical painting.
"Looking at his photos of the 30's, one is struck by a sacred regard to the history of painting, to the historic artistic heritage, which he knew perfectly - continues Ildar Gaul. And the composition and the light in the scene - all these influence the great Renaissance masters, whom he adored . He had and paintings, and beautiful charcoal drawings. And in his picture of naked man who pours water and the nurse whose body glows in the right frame, one of the artists saw a direct connection to Leonardo.
Yes, on the one hand Penson - artist classic pre-revolutionary schools. By the way, the exhibition is a self-portrait yet of pre-revolutionary time - a such a dandy, in striped trousers, patent leather boots, a waistcoat and bow tie, with a smart antennae reclines on a sofa surrounded by such a typical prerevolutionary decadent interior. But on the other hand, he - a contemporary of and participant in a violent revolutionary change of epochs. And not just political, but aesthetic. And the names of the avant-garde Rodchenko and Lissitzky in connection with work Penson mentioned far more often than the name of Leonardo da Vinci.
Hitcher vanguard
To what extent he was conscious of the aesthetic relationship with the revolutionary vanguard, which rejects from a classical heritage, or remembering the famous statement of Mayakovsky sought to "throw Pushkin from the ship today? - I ask his interlocutors.
"Of course, all these masters knew each other and helped each other a huge impact, - says Ildar Galiev. - But unlike Rodchenko, Penson had a reserved attitude towards the ultra-avant-garde aesthetics. Rodchenko worked pointless photo, completely surrendering to the power experiment. Penson also loved people, he could not imagine his art without people, without emotion. This and so many portraits - open face, happy eyes. "
"Penson - a product of 20-30-ies, while Rodchenko - a 10-20-e, - is connected to the conversation Sergei Revyakin. - A revolutionary process had already ended, all tired of the deconstruction of reality, they all wanted to just see themselves and others life as it is. What the people live as they are happy, and Penson's photographs we see it. " (Sergei Revyakin, Moscow club of collectors).
Sergei Revyakin, however, did not say that the change in aesthetic canons was largely the result of changes in political orientations.
In place of the revolutionary relaxedness, the relative freedom and avant-garde experimentation came the 20's the conservative, strict traditionalist atmosphere of Stalinist 30's. Then - who volunteered and who were forced to - changing everything. Changed dramatically and the very image of Max Penson.
The ominous reality
With a self-portrait 30's looking at us is a completely different person. To replace the decadent vivid imagination came the harsh reality of a tough - jacket, belt, a typical image of a military man Stalin's pores. However, instead of a gun in his hands, "watering".
Time is, of course, is reflected in the photographs. One of the most sinister of frames presented at the London exhibition - the happy faces of Uzbek children, firmly in the hands of contraction rifle. The shadow of the rifles black dark stripe crosses their faces.
Max Penson survived the repression, survived the war, but in 1947 fell under the anti-kosmpolitizmom, was fired from everywhere, it's hard to upset, almost lost his mind and died in 1959.
Was firmly forgotten and his photographs have returned to the viewer only in post-perestroika years of efforts, first of all, the daughter of Dina, who to this day lives in Tashkent, and the grandson of Max Penson, Jr. - also a photographer.
A lot of effort to promoting the heritage and Penson put Moscow House of Photography, headed by Olga Sviblova, which organized many exhibitions Max Penson Worldwide.
Now a recognized artist, classic photographs of the twentieth century. That such a fate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/enterta...n_photos.shtml
08.12.2010, 16:33
Max Penson: classic and avant-garde Soviet photography
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