Kiev Fashion and Arts Days. Photographers, fashion and rave parties

Kiev Fashion and Arts Days. Photographers, fashion and rave parties

Collater.al Contributors · 1 year ago · Style

Kiev Fashion and Arts Days, a festival celebrating art, fashion, photography and performance, took place from October 7 to 10.
The project is the brainchild of Sofia Tchkonia, founder of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Tbilisi. The aim is to consolidate Ukraine’s position as the cultural capital of Eastern Europe, but above all to create a platform for all Ukrainian creatives.

We at Collater.al entrusted the story of these 4 days to the editor and photojournalist Mattia Ruffolo, who made a photo-diary of his trip to Kiev.

I spent four days in Kiev where I was invited to meet and learn about the work of the new generation of Ukrainian creatives. Kiev Fashion and Arts Days is a new initiative whose aim is to strengthen, connect and export abroad the liveliest personalities of this country.
The resulting photographic reportage is not intended to be a total and exhaustive representation of the busy program proposed to the international press during these days, but a personal and subjective reading of what I saw in these days.
This work in Kiev, a city I had never visited, would not have happened without the precious and far-sighted talent of Sofia Tchakonia, the engine and propulsive mind behind Tbilisi Fashion Week in Georgia. Sofia was listed as one of the most influential people in the fashion world in 2019.

The arrival is as I expected. On the way from the airport to the city, a series of tall brutalist buildings draw the landscape of the outskirts of Kiev. As we get closer to the city center, I see the Dnieper River, which my hotel overlooks. The Fairmont is an imposing historical building. The corridors are very long and all the same.

Lesha Berezovskiy is one of the first people I meet. We meet on Khreschatyk Street, the main commercial street for Kievians. Khreschatyk Street was completely destroyed during World War II by the retreating Red Army, rebuilt with the architectural criteria of socialist classicism and renovated during the period of Ukrainian independence.

It’s afternoon, it’s sunny, the sky is clear and a cold wind is blowing and we head to Lesha’s studio.
We have to arrive before 6 o’clock because he says that in his studio, at that time, there is a beautiful light.
He tells me that in a few days he will be joining his wife in Moscow and that in two weeks he will be inaugurating a photographic exhibition in Almaty, Kazakhstan, of shots produced at a distance with a friend of his during his isolation.
We arrive at the studio, a former administrative office (perhaps a school) that at the moment the municipality is renting to artists at about 10 dollars per square meter.

He shows me the works he will exhibit and some photographic prints on vintage Soviet paper bought on eBay. He gives me a photography book where some of his photos are included. They are portraits of young people in their rooms and images taken in passing during the evenings at CXEMA, a Ukrainian rave that I will talk about later.
Lesha is a cyclist and there is a lot of nature in his images. He shows me pictures of his family in the countryside at his grandparents’, where he grew up. They are very intimate and tender. I ask him if this is a series he is still pursuing but he says his grandparents don’t really like having their picture taken. In the detail of one of his photos you can see some black sand that reminds me of Stromboli and I suggest to see Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (Terra di Dio).

We go exploring the building, in the corridors there are still the coat racks where students (?) used to put their jackets. Exposed all together they are very beautiful; we take some shots there, but Lesha is shy in front of the lens, she prefers to stay behind. We say goodbye while looking at a map of Europe on a silk scarf hanging in her studio and we plan to meet again in the next evenings for a drink before leaving.

Situationist is a brand founded in 2016 in Tbilisi, proudly Made in Georgia. 
Forbidden Family is a short film directed by Davit Giorgadze and Salome Potskhverashvili with music by Nika Machaidze. A six-minute video that takes you to the Georgian mountains, a snowy forest, decadent Soviet-influenced architecture and worn-out wooden inns. During these days dedicated to fashion and art, Situationist presents at TSUM-the most important department store in Kiev-the collection and the book of this trip to the mountains of Georgia.

“We tried to represent the variety of different styles and characters. The way of dressing and all the important details that make our traditions important. From the coast of the Black Sea to the high mountains of the Svaneti observing and defining every important detail that forms our mark”.

“The current world situation is showing us the importance of togetherness, taking care of the wildlife and nature around us. We hope to showcase the raw, untamed beauty of our country. The most important things in life are always around us”.

I meet Ivan Frolov in his atelier in the morning. Most of the things here are red: boxes, clothing shells, and a neon heart shape at the entrance. He seems to be obsessed with it.
He is humble and determined, telling me about his start in 2014 and that now his team consists of almost 30 people.

On the walls I find erotic drawings of pole dancers or naked young boys wearing only corsets.
Ivan specializes in corsetry, embroidery and couture-to-wear creations. Although sex and bondage are the things that most inspire his work, aesthetic provocation is followed by a deep research of tailoring techniques and human anatomy. Rita Ora, Gwen Stefani and Due Lipa have worn Frolov.

Inside the cafe where we had arranged to meet, I see sitting at the counter Misha Buksha, a very handsome and elegant young man sipping coffee. With him, his dog Sara, a Canarian podenco wearing a colorful handmade cardigan to protect him from the cold.
I order my coffee too and we go outside to drink it. With Misha I immediately feel a good feeling and we start comparing notes to find things in common: same age, same field (publishing/photography) and also he, like me, adopted a dog with his former partner, Yaroslav Solop, with whom he continues to work.

I had heard about Misha and his work, but I didn’t know much else: Misha is 29 years old and the co-founder and creative director of Booksha publishing house. I was intrigued because I had read about this important publication on contemporary Ukrainian photography called UPHA Made in Ukraine.
UPHA (Ukranian Photographic Alternative) is their first book. Misha and Yaroslav’s research started in 2017 and took four years to complete, mainly because of the rights issue. The book features 57 photographers who, according to the publisher’s research, document the important social, political, cultural, and historical metamorphosis in Ukraine and around the world, and describe how photography in Ukraine is evolving. This book is on a mission to explore, present, and archive Ukraine’s photographic heritage. The images, analyzed by the publishing house’s team of researchers, highlight a reflection on political and social changes, and document the critical stages in the development of Ukrainian society, war, religious impact on consciousness, the consequences of the economic crisis, gender, body and sexuality studies.

To browse through the book we went to the coffee shop of a contemporary art and photography gallery, The Naked Room, founded by curator Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko and director Marc Raymond Wilkins.
On the way he tells me about a trip he made to Venice with his mother, interrupted only after 24 hours due to an unforeseen event that brought them immediately back to Ukraine. The desire to return makes us say goodbye with the hope of seeing each other again soon in Italy and his suggestion to see a film by Russian director Aleksandr Galin entitled The Cape of Casanova.

A few days before my arrival in Kiev I wrote a message to Slava Lepsheeev telling him that I would be in town for a few days. He immediately replied giving me an appointment at Kosatka, a small hipster bar in the center of Kiev. Slava arrives with an electric scooter, we greet each other and start talking. He has few words and seems shy, but he listens well.
I know Slava because i-D, the magazine I used to run, had produced a documentary on the Ukrainian clubbing scene. Slava is the one behind CXEMA, a traveling techno rave that took place in the industrial areas of Kiev.
CXEMA was born on the heels of the 2014 violent revolutions in Kiev, culminating in the ouster of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Janukovyč. After the protests became full-blown riots, authorities opened fire on civilians resulting in at least 82 deaths, including 13 police officers, and more than 1,100 injuries. With an ousted president, Russia invading Crimea, and entire militias of opponents rising up across Ukraine, young people reacted in their own way by taking or forgetting on the runway all their disappointments and dissatisfactions that only such precarious politics can trigger.

With Slava we get straight to the point, I ask him how is the scene in Kiev at the moment and he tells me that, as everywhere, the lockdown has rellected things. He tells me that he would like to open his own club, small, for up to 100 people. He is looking at rental properties and may have found one. I ask him to describe to me how he imagines it and he replies with a long bar, vintage furniture and nice people.
He tells me that before the lockdown he would have liked to take a trip to Italy, to Sicily, and that he still dreams of doing it. He asks me for advice whether to go to Palermo or Catania and I tell him to see both, but that Catania in the ’90s was musically hyper in step with the rest of the world, that it was the Seattle of Italy – in my head there were names like the record producer Francesco Virlinzi who somehow created a fertile ground for artists like Michael Stipe, Peter Baks, Natalie Merchant who spent their summers there and that in the clubs they danced the Pixies, Sonic Youth, The B-52s – but it seemed to me to stray too far from the conversation.
We leave the bar and before we say goodbye we take a walk in the nearby park. As we talk about travel, I take a few shots of him, and we part ways by recommending I go to Yerevan, Armenia.

We are at Nosorog, a strip club in the west of Kiev for the presentation of the second issue of “Hrishnytsia”, an erotic zine founded by Julie Poly.
Yulia Polyashchenko AKA Julie Poly is a photographer and art director living in Kiev. She studied at the School of Photography in Kharkiv and today shoots for Vogue, Officiel, Harper’s Bazaar, Dazed & Confused and i-D.
Eroticism, fashion and unconventional beauty prevail in her work. The artist says she finds herself constantly inspired by “mundane things, everyday events, stories of friends’ lives and personal experiences”.

Julie is wearing a pink Balenciaga sweatshirt that says GAY PRIDE on it. With her is her award-winning poodle named Pushok, which means fluffy in Italian. Pushok is 21 months old and has already appeared on a cover of Vogue Ukraine. She has won several beauty awards such as: Junior Champion of Ukraine; Junior Grand Champion of Ukraine; Champion of Ukraine; Grand Champion of Ukraine; Poodle Club Champion; and still competing to win more. At the party he looks very annoyed.
There are 3 performers on stage: a hypnotic drag singer who looks like something out of a David Lynch movie and two pole dancers. One of the dancers is teacher Julie, who practices pole dancing regularly three times a week. The theme of this zine is tattoos: inside the club the guests can get tattooed by two professional tattoo artists.

Vic Bakin is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker originally from Turkmenistan but now living in Kiev.
We meet in his home-studio where he shows me his photographic archive of the last years. He lives in the upper part of the city and says that in that neighborhood he feels calm because he has everything at hand.
Entering his studio he plays techno music in the background and begins to show me his cameras, his books of his favorite photographers – some of them even autographed – his archive of printed works perfectly organized in his drawers. He shoots all the time and now develops his photos independently in his bathroom at home. During the lockdown, unable to meet people, he reworked his old photos with layers of paint that rarefied the images. A selection of these images is now on display at the K41 club.

K41 is one of the most interesting nights at the moment in Kiev.
It actually has no a fixed name, it is named K41 because it is located at Kyrylivska St, 41. The night is best identified with the mathematical symbol “∄” which is equivalent to “does not exist”. You can’t google them and they don’t even have social media. The night is currently held in a former brewery and the music goes on day and night all weekend long. What looks like an abandoned building from the outside is now an LGBTQIA+ friendly club that hosts local DJs along with big names. The line up and door selection are not much different from those at Berghain.
After approval, before entering, you have to undergo the Covid test, 15 min wait and if you are negative, you get in.

After a few minutes his floor is strewn with hundreds of images of young men in black and white. During the conversion, without meaning to, I start making a selection of the ones that strike me the most. Vic is surprised at how quickly I look at and select the pictures. I look at him and say: “I know, I scroll really fast. It’s a matter of instinct, I have to like the photo at first glance”.
In the meantime we talk about his relationship with his body and his models. She tells me about her muse, a boy named Roma, whom she meets regularly on the subway. She shoots with an American folding 4×5 photojournalism camera using large format film.
Once the images are selected, we pick them up off the floor and hang them on the wall he uses as a backdrop for his models. While we do this we try to find a connection between Aby Warburg and Tumbler.

Before leaving, he takes a copy of his photographic book titled “Heavy Clouds” and gives me a copy, writing as dedication “To Mattia, memories seem to vanish”.

Special thanks to Sofia Tchkonia, Julia Kostetska, Maria Mokhova (White Rabbit Agency), Vladyslav Tomik, Daniela Battistini.

Photographers:
Rōman Himey
Vic Bakin
Kris Voitik
Mattia Ruffolo

Article by Mattia Ruffolo

Kiev Fashion and Arts Days. Photographers, fashion and rave parties
Style
Kiev Fashion and Arts Days. Photographers, fashion and rave parties
Kiev Fashion and Arts Days. Photographers, fashion and rave parties
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Brice Gelot, “For the love of god”

Brice Gelot, “For the love of god”

Tommaso Berra · 2 days ago · Photography

For the love of God is an expression that expresses an image of religion understood as a solution to salvation, often associated with a sense of dissatisfaction or impatience. It is in common use, embedded in language as much as religion itself is pervasive, for multiple and complex reasons, in society.
“For the love of god” is also the title of the photographic series by French artist Brice Gelot, which Collater.al is publishing in full preview. The gaze is toward religion – the Christian Catholic religion in particular – understood as a social-cultural system of behavior, which exceeds rational explanations by tending toward transcendence. It is perhaps in this never running out of meaning in the real world that the success of religious art over the centuries lies, called upon to interpret and depict symbols that are always the same but take on new meanings from time to time.

Photographing faith becomes for Brice Gelot an expression of the reality. Observing how people face the challenges of nature and photographing them means living a life of faith firsthand, which becomes a tool for understanding and analyzing what is sacred and profane.
In Gelot’s shots, it emerges how religion is part of the human experience and how it represents a force that can shape the world around us and its aesthetic representation. Tattoos, statues, icons, niches for the veneration of saints, the artistic imagery in these photographs is not metaphysical but real, living along the streets and on people’s skin.

Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot | Collater.al
Brice Gelot, “For the love of god”
Photography
Brice Gelot, “For the love of god”
Brice Gelot, “For the love of god”
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The inner landscapes of Tetyana Maryshko

The inner landscapes of Tetyana Maryshko

Giorgia Massari · 3 days ago · Photography

The haze of uncertainty, which came with the advent of the pandemic and the subsequent Ukrainian war, swept over photographer Tetyana Maryshko, so much so that it led her to create a long-lasting photographic project in which she relentlessly searches for her own essence. Through a path made of honesty to herself, the Ukrainian photographer explores her inner self by making self-shots in which she blends personal and relational elements. “There is me, the camera and the truth,” says the artist.
Each photograph captures a reflection, a conversation, a still moment in time that dialogues with her soul. The shots, in black and white and color, attempt to go beyond the aesthetics of the subject by applying a veil of blurring that prevents the image from being clearly read, or by inserting textured surfaces in front of the lens, such as wet glass or bubble wrap. At other times, however, the photograph is clear and sharp, such as her shot in the bathtub, which hints at suffering. The gaze is lost in emptiness, the flushed eyes exude weeping and despair while the tight lips communicate helplessness, that feeling that every human being feels in the face of war.

An element that recurs often in Tetyana Maryshko’s is the flower, placed in dialogue with the body: placed along the spine or in front of the eyes, to cover the gaze, symbolizing a desire for rebirth. Tetyana tells how it was a long, difficult and troubled journey: “When we turn the camera toward ourselves, we embark on a journey of self-discovery that requires introspection and vulnerability… In the end, this project was not just a personal journey, but a universal one. A testimony to the human experience.”

The inner landscapes of Tetyana Maryshko
Photography
The inner landscapes of Tetyana Maryshko
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The male body taxonomy by Francesco Paolo Gassi

The male body taxonomy by Francesco Paolo Gassi

Laura Tota · 4 days ago · Photography

Inhabiting a body means perceiving it, recognizing oneself in it and being recognized. It means feeling familiar to oneself and to others, relating to the World through nerve endings, fat and senses.
The body is the core center of our own identity and will, and the nude has long been a favorite subject for photographers since the birth of the photographic medium. However, speaking of male nude, its diffusion is lower, except for some particular cases, since it has been considered less interesting (if not disturbing) by the dominant “Male Gaze” (or the representation of the female universe, in the visual arts and literature, from a male and heterosexual point of view, which represents women as mere sexual objects aimed at the satisfaction of the male audience). Only since the late ’70s, thanks to the birth of the homosexual liberation movement and the advertising market, we have witnessed a new life of nude male, able to transform the male body into an erotic subject open to hedonistic contemplation.

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da GASSI (@iam_gassi)

An example is the iconic body of works by Robert Mapplethorpe, attracted by the male nude since childhood, which recalls classical nudity and gives dignity and beauty to a considered degrading category of people, or the most recent portraits by the photographer Florian Hetz who, through tight close ups, immortalizes the true essence and innate sensuality of the male body.

And it is precisely on the border between art and eroticism that the narration of “Bodies” is played out, the latest project by Francesco Paolo Gassi, a young author from Puglia who investigates the physicality of the body in his practice. Francesco is literally obsessed with imperfections and the naturalness of smudging, far from the glossy aesthetic clichés: hair, skin and body fluids are his playing field, details are his favorite points of view. He moves carefully around the male body, that is at the same time, something familiar to him, but also a source of shame for a community he has had to hide his sexuality for years.

Art, pornography and taxonomy dialogue in the photographic space. The poses, meticulously studied, just as the illumination and the relationship of the body with space, suggest and allude to an eroticization of the body that is never explicit, they orient the human anatomy to emphasize the insignificant and the banal, elevating it to the object of desire. It’s an almost scientific approach that, through the photographic image, aims to make eternal the organic matter of which man is made and to reach the essence of every portrayed subject.
Thus, the male bodies become the ideal playing field on which to renegotiate identity, free from social superstructures and free from conditioning, presented to the eye of the observer in its total, disturbing and ambivalent authenticity. The project combines digital photographs with snapshots:  the unrepeatable body is perpetuated in the uniqueness of a Polaroid, as well as the quality of the digital image reflects every single detail of the epidermal specificity of each photographed body.

The male body taxonomy by Francesco Paolo Gassi
Photography
The male body taxonomy by Francesco Paolo Gassi
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Lise Johansson and the non-appartenence to places

Lise Johansson and the non-appartenence to places

Giorgia Massari · 5 days ago · Photography

Why do we feel we belong to some places and not others? Danish photographer Lise Johansson (1985) questions herself. This reflection is the starting point of her research, based on an analysis of the relationship between humans and the environment they inhabit. Very often our homes represent who we are, they are a reflection of our soul and character. Minimal or baroque, total white or colorful, full of objects or aseptic; in any case, we build environments tailored to us, in which we feel comfortable and which shape our person. But when we go outside the home and find ourselves relating to other environments, such as the workplace, a doctor’s office or our friend’s house, external factors come into play that we cannot control and with which we are forced to interface. Lise Johansson reasons about these unconscious dynamics that govern unconscious psychology.

In the series I’m not here, the photographer makes a series of selfies inside an abandoned hospital. The environment is aseptic and a disturbing desolation in which the white dominates relentlessly. The daylight enters through the windows, sometimes in contrast with the artificial one, accentuating the chromatic power of white, highlighted even more by the milky complexion of the photographer and her long candid dress, typical of hospital patients.
The relationship between the subject and the environment is not relaxed. One perceives a melancholy tension, typical of subjects locked inside a place. The figure almost seems to wander like a spectrum, its face is never visible because of the photographic framing and, in other cases, it is hidden inside or behind an object – like a sink or a mirror. This detail allows the woman to be present in space but at the same time not to inhabit it, as if her mind tried to escape in other directions, looking for a way out. Like the subject, the environment is vulnerable, stationary in limbo and undergoing transformation. The place exists, like the woman, but they are forgotten entities, without status and completely emptied of a soul.

Lise Johansson and the non-appartenence to places
Photography
Lise Johansson and the non-appartenence to places
Lise Johansson and the non-appartenence to places
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