Alexey Titarenko
Nailya Alexander is pleased to announce the opening of her gallery in New York at 24 W 57th Street, Suite 501, which she shares with her colleague, Patricia Laligant, a specialist in vintage European photography (1920-1950). Nailya Alexander Gallery debuts with Alexey Titarenko: Time Standing Still, the artist’s first solo show in New York featuring photographs of St. Petersburg (1992-2000). Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am – 6pm.
Born in 1962 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Titarenko has devoted his photographic career to depicting the atmosphere and inhabitants of his beloved city. The post-Soviet era required innovative forms of expression that could serve as the visual equivalents of the new social and political reality - the anxiety-laden, gloomy period of economic catastrophe following the empire's collapse. Inspired by both the music and literature he has loved since childhood and from his long walks through the city filled with lines of tired people - standing in stores, wandering through flea markets, or crowding around metro entrances- Titarenko’s series “City of Shadows” (1992-1994) depicts ghostlike images floating through atmospheres of devastation and despair. The artist’s most melodic and poetic series, “Black and White Magic of St. Petersburg” (1995-1997) offers a feeling of hope as it reveals the city’s eerie, melancholic beauty. Created on the threshold of two centuries, "Time Standing Still" (1998-2000) presents a haunting commentary on illusory existence and the transient nature of life itself.
Although in his work Titarenko utilizes nineteenth century techniques such as prolonged exposure, he is constantly searching for new possibilities and has developed an original style that he refers to as "metaphorical photography." The artist has participated in such well-known projects as Aufbruch – Die neue Russische Fotografie in Internationalen Photoszene (Cologne, Germany) 1998, Chronicles of Change in Southwest Museum of Photography (Daytona Beach, USA) 1996, Photostroyka: New Soviet Photography at the Aperture Foundation (New York, USA) 1990. Among his 30 personal exhibitions are St. Petersburg: City of Water and City of Shadows at FotoFest 2004 (Houston, TX); Alexey Titarenko: Four Movements of St. Petersburg at the Reattu Museum (Arles International Photography Festival, France) 2002; Alexey Titarenko: Retrospective Exhibition, Galerie Municipale du Château d’eau (Toulouse, France) 2000 and Ville des ombres. La magie noire et blanche de St. Petersburg in Musée de Nice (Nice, France) 1999.
His photographs are in the collections of fourteen European and US museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (TX); the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MA); the Museum of Fine Arts in Columbus (OH); European House of Photography in Paris (France); Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne (Switzerland); and in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (Russia).