City of Hidden Lives at Nailya Alexander Gallery
If you are a frequent reader of our magazine, you will know that our love for Alexey Titarenko’s ghostly grayscale photography is certainly not understated.
If you are a frequent reader of our magazine, you will know that our love for Alexey Titarenko’s ghostly grayscale photography is certainly not understated.
“So this is 1992. This is the crowd near the subway station. But not where I took it first. So, if you look at it from this time, you see this area that’s very busy.
One of the defining qualities of photography is that it can cast the familiar in a different light, to make you look again. The photos in Alexey Titarenko’s new book The City Is a Novel (Damiani, $60) do just that. Titarenko’s signature style is a washed out grayscale that recalls early platinotypes. If you lived in the Soviet Union, as did Titarenko (and I), you would understand where the grayness comes from. Everything in the Soviet Union seemed gray, reflecting the drabness in the water supply, from the country’s soul to its streets.