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ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT
Igor Posner
Notes from Underground
It started in 2006, a year when I returned to St. Petersburg for the first time in 14 years. At the time I had no idea what I wanted to get out of this place, photographically anyway. I just knew that I wanted to immerse myself into its cold, gloomy winter and take pictures. Trip after trip as images started to appear I noticed that somehow the pictures started to reconstruct this city’s heavy, yet poetic soul, like captured by Dostoevsky, Mandelstam, Bely, Brodsky and others.
Excerpt from a personal diary (February, 2008):
“Leningrad creates a feeling of a lost and a haunted city, an open nerve, where little tragedies of every day life that seem universal are so acutely brought to surface…with its bars, streets, drunks, communal apartments this place creates a sense of an inexistent dream within an authentic nightmare, and yet paradoxically conveys a feeling of poetic nostalgia and melancholy.”
Images used in this slideshow are chapter fragments from a book project about St. Petersburg (2006-2009) – “Notes from Underground” (working title).
Music by Alfred Schnittke – In Memoriam II, tempo di valse
Special thanks to: Olya Vysotskaya, Anna Bocharova
Bio
Born in St. Petersburg (former Leningrad), Russia, Igor Posner moved to Los Angeles, California in the early 90s. Early work includes photographs taken in south-central and downtown Los Angeles, Tijuana, Mexico. Igor returned to Russia in 2006, taking up photography full time.
In 2007, Igor moved from Los Angeles to New York City. At present, he lives between St. Petersburg, Russia and New York. Currently he works on two series: first, about Russian immigrant communities in Brooklyn and LA, and second, about former Jewish ghetto settlements in Russia, Western Ukraine and Belarus.
Related links
Editor’s note:
please only one comment per essay….
-david alan harvey
I often visit “Dpreview” where a mix of amateur and professional photographers congregate to discuss equipment and to show and critique photos. Critiques there often drive me nuts, because so many commentors seem incapable of seeing a photograph beyond its most superficial values: does it have noise or that plastic-smooth low ISO digital look, is it in sharp focus, does it have a smooth gradation of tone? If it has that smooth, plastic, look it is good. If it has noise, it is bad.
What matters far more to me is a photograph carries a message, tells a story, creates a mood, generates impact. If it does, I don’t care if its blurry, noisy, grainy, contrasty or whatever.
I’d say every single photo in this essay tells a story, carries a message, creates mood, generates impact. And technically, I would call them excellent. It would be very easy to try something like this and then create something that just looked contrived. Not so here.
Now that I have watched it, a few photos come back to haunting life in my mind, where I still see them sharply and in detail; others recede into the darkness and the music and I cannot see them clearly – yet I continue to feel them.
Among those that haunt me clearly – the young woman sitting with the brave but desperate smile and a mug of beer, the cat receding into the wall, the dog chewing on the doll, the men walking away with a dusting of snow on their shoulders, the nude woman – gaunt and abstract – like she is not there, the nude man, the view from above looking down onto the street where the building bulges forward, the three boys who appear to step out of a very early 20th century portrait.
As to the music, it was appropriate and good – yet, I felt that I would rather browze through the pictures at my own pace, with no sound effects.
Maybe one day I will get to see the book and then I will do so.
And — Igor, I think you may have set a record for Burn – certainly for all the stories that I have managed to look at. I don’t know exactly images you included, but I’m sure it must be over 60.
Congratulations.
Beautiful Work Igor. From every perspective a success. The variety is extra-ordinary as is the implementation of the technique. It’s easy to feel like the recipient of the bold mood you’re striving to express. A book would be a natural next step with this work and one i’d love to have on my coffee table.
I love the subtlety of the timing. During those extra seconds of blackness, my mind thinks how wonderful the intimacy, the beauty of the streaks of lightness, too bad it is over. Then the second ends and another shot appears that only enforces what the brain was thinking a split second ago.
This is photography that lingers.
Certain of these images are for me, like magnificent paintings: complete stories unto themselves rendered with depth and integrity and mastery, and I delight in swimming in your consciousness. I so look forward to your future work.
This essay has only one smile.
I have just experienced the power of multimedia. Expressing feeling through imaging is now something we should all contemplate in this new manner of communicating. The imagery is retro and in many cases very two dimensional, but it contains content. What is most interesting about this piece is the devolved photography. The daguerreotype feel
of these images is what really makes this so well executed.
The first viewing found me asking traditional questions about reproduction and quality, but having looked at it again I’ve accepted it for what it is and in the form that it is displayed. A book perhaps, but a digital book would have so much more power. The timing and sound raises the value of this work far more.
This essay has only one smile… thank you Igor
I like your essay Igor.. it reminds me a litle bit Lorenzo Castore photographs from Poland.
I’ve been looking at Igor’s work from some time now, it was a nice surprise to find his work here…
He has such a stunning style that I simply love, each one of his photographs leaves something in my stomach…his diary is full of life and feeling, simply real and straight to the point.
WHAT-A-RIDE IGOR!! One of my very favorite essays ever!!
Congratulations!
amazing essay! impressive relationship between the images and the music. it fits so well!
super kajfi!
daduha, tindirindim!!!
I was rivited from beginning to end. I love the aesthetic look of these images; as far as conveying a mood. They are a set of images that conveyed not only a mood but the circumstances of , these people, this city.
Can see you have an understanding of the mood of this place.
Thanks for putting it together and sending in. Well worth the effort from where I stand.
this is wierd ……….. bad ass wierd !!!!
Daring, bold images. Not contemporary, from the twenties. Haunting. Some so beautiful they take my breath. I thought of movies, and of books, and of stories in old east European cities. Very powerful.
thank you anton and david for publishing this essay on burn; and i thank all of you for watching and responding.
igor.
Powerful and beautiful images
Ura Dada!
this is wonderful. great music selection. i want to write a story about each photo; they are all so fraught with activity.
Igor Posner has been a revelation.
His photos tell a St. Petersburg characterized by little tragedies of every day life that wear down in the streets and, especially, in bars. Are just pictures taken in the bars that caught my attention. In fact, they remember me the scenes of bohemian Paris, described by Degas, Picasso, Lautrec. Men and women lost in their glasses with gloomy and vacant eyes.
Stories to the margins of society today as then.
His “pictorialism” ispires me and encourages me to be able to one day do photos like yours.
p.s. Sorry for my bad english!
hi, dada )
’seen this slideshow in Petersburg a few weeks before NY. that was a deep night on the last floor of an apartments, located on crossroads of 2d line & sredny prospect with the sight of st.michael lutheran chirch from it’s window… nothing to say more. perfect shot in my head & heart. thnx a lot for your work
& thnx 2 sushka too )
Very stunning. dark, sinister, and moving. Its one complete piece. I love the fact that each image can stand on its own and yet together, they make a unified and compelling statement.