The Road opens a large-scale project at the Ra Gallery, titled Social Projections. It is a series of actions bordering on the social, cultural, and political contexts. The Day is the project’s information sponsor, which makes sense, as the reader ought to know how much this newspaper is doing to promote artistic photography in Ukraine through its photo contests and annual photo exhibits.
As for the display, I would not want to describe it as one of reportage or documentary photography, although there is every formal justification to do so. Hliadielov also seems alienated from any stage effects. He does not dramatize life, nor is he after sensation, as the latter often manifest themselves as catastrophe and vice. He is primarily interested in “tears shed unseen by the world,” daily dramas concealed behind perfectly normal landscapes, situations, faces, and gestures. Naturally, the underlying idea of his Social Projections was chosen correctly. Hliadielov’s series are marked by a characteristic social temperament, yet the portraits of homeless children or HIV-infected people (the book Here and Now) or consumptive convicts (Project Unmasked) are not simply a problem as such. There are also human destinies, little and big people making up dry figures in sociological studies. The new exposition reveals a new Hliadielov. His attitude toward life and ascetic style are still there, although the notional perspective is somewhat different. The road of life and death, as a means of communication or expression of one’s world outlook, getting the better of nature or merging into it — such is the central symbol of the photographs on display.
The luxury of a Tien Shan pass is balanced by the chamber finesse of an exit from the Gobelins subway station in Paris. The captivating desert around the Pamirs route coexists with the elegy of a damp street in Birmingham. The bewitching beauty of the road, eternally attracting man, is portrayed with a black-and-white graphic precision. If it were only landscape photography, just a hymn glorifying all earthly routes, the Road display could be referred to as an outstanding photo exhibit. Hliadielov, however, being an honest artist, goes further. Faces and all their expressions interest him as much as the road. People on the roadside are those daily characters no one seems to notice, and they are precisely what lends the exhibit true drama and persuasiveness. A desolate child chewing gum on the street crossing in front of Kyiv’s Lybidska subway station with a crowd of indifferent passers-by in the background; a woman sweeping a street in Grozny after another battle. Azerbaijani soldiers headed for combat posts at Karabakh. An old vagrant on a street in Kemerovo and his counterpart on a sidewalk in Birmingham. An Azerbaijan refugee camp, with inmates living in boxcars. Hliadielov keeps his thoughts to himself an does not expect any comment from the onlooker; he does not focus on sore spots and wounds. He poses only one question about the road, about where we are headed and whether we are aware of those walking ahead, on the sides or on different roads. Perhaps to answer it one has to stop and take a closer look. Maybe this will actually happen.
THE DAY’S REFERENCE
Oleksandr Hliadielov, independent Ukrainian journalist-photographer; b. 1956; professionally into photography since 1989; cooperates with international editions and humanitarian organizations; has had one-man shows in the US, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Russia; winner of Ukrpresphoto Grand Prize (1997), Hasselblad European Photo Contest Award (Switzerland, 1998), MOTHER JONES International Fund for Documentary Photography Award (2001). He is currently working on three long-term projects dedicated to (a) homeless children, (b) the HIV-infected (Here and Now published in 2000), and (c) Unmasked jointly with MSF (Belgium), starting last year in Siberia, aimed at illustrating a tuberculosis epidemic in Russia.
