A photo exhibition, Selected Works by RIA Novosti Photographers in World Press Photo History, which will feature the work of prestigious award winners, will open at Moscow’s Krasny Oktyabr confectionery plant on Friday, the organizers told RIA Novosti.
The exhibition, dedicated to the news agency’s 70th anniversary, focuses on eternal human values.
“We have consciously included not only photos that actually won awards, but also a group of photos that our photographers sent to the WPP over the years,” said Anastasia Davydova, who heads RIA Novosti’s Exhibition Projects Center.
She said this was done primarily for the viewers’ sake, to let them make their own decisions about the photographs and to agree or disagree with the judges.
“All these shots are still good to see, I mean they have not become outdated but have retained their historical or universal human value. One can say they have withstood the test of time,” Davydova added.
Volleyball
Alongside the display featuring RIA Novosti photos, the confectionery plant will house this year’s prize-winning photos from the World Press Photo contest, including the World Press Photo of the Year 2010: a portrait of an Afghan woman. Bibi Aisha, 18, was disfigured as retribution for fleeing her Taliban husband’s home (her nose and ears were cut off).
RIA Novosti’s display will stand out primarily because of its unique use of technology, Davydova said.
“We won’t print or frame our images in the traditional way. We print them on fabric, and we do it twice. The main image will hang at a distance from the wall to make it “alive,” while its black-and-white “shadow” printed on transparent silk will cling to the wall,” she explained.
In her words, light will play an integral role in the display, putting the images in greater relief and bringing them to life.
RIA Novosti photographers have won more than 20 WPP awards, the most prestigious photojournalism awards, over the agency’s 70-year history.
The display will include photos by Igor Kostin, who was at the epicenter of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 and risked his own life to create a unique collection of over 600,000 photos.
Сhoreographer Igor Moiseyev with his wife, Irina
It will feature several collections and individual photographs by Vladimir Vyatkin, a six time WPP winner, including The Chechen Syndrome (2000), Ballet: Behind the Scenes (1985), Good Hands of Doctor Vakhtang Nemsadze series (1985) as well as portraits of choreographer Igor Moiseyev with his wife, Irina, and of a bodyguard at a political conference in Kabul.
There are several works by Valery Shustov, one of the first Soviet photo correspondents to win first prize in the Netherlands in 1969: the famous Baikal at Peace, Grand Prix at the Fotomundi show, as well as his series Learn to Swim Before You Learn to Walk! (1979) and Oil Field Fire in Dagestan (1978).
The display contains two works by Viktor Chernov, who is famous for his portraits of people at work: Professor Meshalkin Performing a Successful Heart Surgery (1981) and Professor Fyodorov Performing Eye Surgery (1984).
There is a photo by Vladimir Fedorenko, Mikhail Gorbachev Among Participants of the First Congress of People’s Deputies, which won the WPP Golden Eye Award in 1989.
Photographs in the exhibition related to sports include Igor Utkin’s Volleyball series (Grand Prix 1969) and Alexander Grashchenkov’s A Family at Igor Charkovsky’s Physical Training School that won the Golden Eye award in 1985. There are also works by Dmitry Donskoi, who specialized in sports photography for 35 years (The Duel, 1979), as well as by Sergei Guneyev, one of the oldest Kremlin pool photo correspondents and a well-known master of sports photography. He covered every Olympics starting from 1980; this display contains his most vibrant images.
Alexander Lyskin is another WPP winner. He is also known for his membership in Britain’s Royal Photographic Society. The display includes his works Contrast and Chukotka Graphics.
There are portraits from Boris Kaufman’s 1972 Women of Dagestan series. In 2010, RIA Novosti organized an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia.
First Steps
Other photographs in the exhibition include Yury Kaver’s Birch Trees (1984) and In the Golden Dunes (1983); Vyacheslav Bobkov’s Radiobiological Research (1976) and Elk Farm (1978); Oleg Ivanov’s First Steps, Vitaly Arutyunov’s Repairs at 101-meter-high Motherland Memorial in Volgograd; and Max Alpert’s 1973 photo story Surgeon Nikolai Amosov.
The exhibition will be on display at Krasny Oktyabr through July 10 and will travel to Samara and Kazan afterwards.
World Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organization run under the royal patronage of Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands, where World Press Photo was founded in 1955. Its main activity is holding the world’s largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. In addition to World Press Photo of the Year, prizes are awarded in the following categories: Spot News, General News, People in the News, Sports, Contemporary Issues, Daily Life, Portraits, Arts and Entertainment, and Nature. Three prizes are awarded for individual photographs and three prizes for photo series. An album of winning photos is published every year with commentary in six languages, and exhibitions are held in several countries, which draw a lot of attention.
MOSCOW. June 9, (RIA Novosti)