…I keep thinking about the hero and the hero’s gesture: how relevant can this hero be in the future?
Serhiy Bratkov, from an interview with Mykhailo Sidlin [1].
In Serhiy Bratkov’s works of the late 1990s – early 2000s, there is a painful desire to grasp the “hero.” To understand who he is, what his gesture consists of, and how it reflects a turning point in time. His series from that period form a whole gallery of portrait-types. In some ways, they evoke associations with the “Peredvizhniki” tradition, which sought to affirm the value of the simple real person. Sailors, riot police officers, steelworkers, secretaries, and many other heroes of Bratkov, in contrast to creating an idealized generalized image, offer an intimate, humanistic story, representing society as it is. “During Soviet times, we dealt with characters. Here is a party worker, here is an engineer, here is the artist Kabakov, who was the first to understand this character nature. Then, during perestroika and the nineties, people allowed themselves to be heroes” [2], says Bratkov.
Today, too, there are calls for heroism. Using Soviet slogans and clichés, the current ideology gives them a modern ultra-patriotic flavor. But at the end of the 1990s, perhaps heroism could be seen in everyday fearlessness in the face of the uncertainty of existence. Based on dictionary definitions, in this text, the hero will be understood as “a person who embodies the characteristic, typical traits of their era, environment” [3].
Noting the “social morbidity” [4] in Vagrich Bakhchanyan’s drawings, Boris Mikhaylov thereby defined the Kharkiv artistic environment in general. Social morbidity characterizes the traits of the turning point era of the 1980s – 2000s. Fragility, vulnerability, uncertainty, susceptibility — these distinguish the heroes of Kharkiv artists and are precisely what attracts them. Speaking about his characters, Kabakov noted that “they are half fantastic, half real…” [5]. The heroes of Kharkiv photographers are real. Social morbidity defined the focus of interest on the unmanifested, unnoticed, humiliated, vulnerable; on those people and that reality which others prefer not to see or notice. This attention contains the humanistic dimension of Kharkiv photography, the empathy inherent to Kharkiv artists. Above all prevails the desire to affirm the possibility and necessity of living a “normal” human life — normal in the desire to allow oneself to express subjective judgment and emotionality [6], inherent to a person, not a clichéd ostentatious hero, not a construct of a person similar to “Stalinist homunculi” [7], reflected in Serhiy Livnev’s film “Sickle and Hammer” (1994).
“In a half-starving but painfully proud country” [8], as Eduard Limonov noted, Kharkiv photographers paid attention to what was offstage — noticing and criticizing the morbidness of this pride, showing the morbidity of a society that has nothing but former pride. In one of the photographs from the “Archive Series” (1988), Yevhen Pavlov captures a particularly dramatic yet thoroughly everyday scene that impresses with its social transgression. Amid the bustle of perestroika, shortages, and queues, a crowd of citizens does not notice a dead person lying on the asphalt. This shot declares the devaluation of human life, which remains characteristic of our territory to this day.
A few years earlier, Pavlov created “Psychosis” (1983). The very title aptly expresses the feeling of the time: silent, terrible, hidden psychosis. “…the era was uninitiative. And a huge number of people then drank themselves away: they could not realize themselves and justifiably considered themselves a lost generation” [9], notes Leonid Parfyonov. The “Psychosis” series was shot in the psychiatric ward of one of Kharkiv’s hospitals; the photos depict patients suffering from alcoholic psychosis. Various unexpected angles, tense bodies, as if frozen in death spasms and suffering. The chosen complex angle with foreshortened perspective evokes associations with the composition “Dead Christ” by the 15th-century Italian artist Andrea Mantegna.
Пінакотека Брера, Мілан
Mantegna’s monochrome painting is perceived as evidence of severe tortures endured for the atonement of humanity’s sins. Christ here appears as a real person who experienced incomparable torment and pain. The legs of Pavlov’s hero, bound with hospital bandages, testify to prolonged pain, self-torment, the impossibility of self-realization, and acceptance of reality. Christian narrative connotations often arise in the works of Kharkiv artists and probably reach their apotheosis in Boris Mikhaylov’s “Medical History,” created in 1997–1998.
Much has been said and written about this series. Here, I would like to emphasize its connection with the grand painting, with the desire to “frame” — in both literal and figurative senses — these heroes who could not adapt to new living conditions, lost in an era lacking a backbone, like Pavlov’s “Psychosis” heroes.
But if Pavlov acts as a recorder of the era, distanced from it, then Mikhaylov’s portrait series (and later Bratkov’s) are distinguished precisely by their involvement in the process of working with the hero. As Bart de Bare noted, “images primarily concern relationships and humanity: the photographer is often in dangerous situations where he establishes connections with people” [10]. In his famous series, which can boldly be called epochal in the history of contemporary Ukrainian art, Mikhaylov managed to establish relationships with people — homeless individuals who appeared as a mass class after the collapse of the USSR. He also managed to create a “material image of the time,” according to Olena Petrovska: “If history as a science cannot capture the life of a generation as a whole, then art can. Art in this sense proves to be a more receptive and accurate documentarian than individual representatives of historical science. It is much truer to its time and in this regard much more capable of reflecting it. Although, obviously, this happens unintentionally — I don’t think Mikhaylov set such a task. But it must be admitted that he succeeded” [11].
Vulnerability, defenselessness, aggression, violence — these are what Mikhaylov’s heroes feel and face. If in the series “Near the Ground” (1991) and “Twilight” (1993) the artist captures the loss of ground underfoot, a stop, a pause, then in “Medical History” the hero’s detachment occurs during the decomposition of totality: “I am constantly working on watching how life changes” [12], notes Mikhaylov.
“Medical History” reflected radical changes in Soviet society’s life, which is visibly transforming into post-Soviet and soon into a new (independent) Ukrainian one. In this series, Mikhaylov consciously singles out a number of photographs into the so-called “Requiem.” According to him, “…the requiem is the form of presentation in which they (the homeless — author’s note) allowed themselves to be shown. […] Or maybe it’s like looking into the face of a tragedy that appears in different parts of the Earth and at different times? A look of hopelessness of forced wandering” [13]. He prints this series in large format, sometimes framing them, which contributes to the monumentalization of images and the manifestation of unnoticed or unnoticed everyday traits. Large-format staged photographs refer to the tradition of the formal portrait, as well as to the idea of the grand painting, especially Russian realist art of the second half of the 19th century.
One of the images of the “Requiem” is very close to V. G. Perov’s painting “The Holy Fool” (1875). If Perov’s holy fool, a Christian ascetic, is the result of observations of post-reform Russia’s life a little more than a decade after the abolition of serfdom, then Mikhaylov’s hero is a record of observations of “post-reform” Ukraine’s life a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What unites these works is the appeal to the inner psychological life of a person during a rupture of consciousness and radical socio-political changes. They raise questions about the possibilities of a new life, the acute need to feel and find oneself in new conditions. In the first case — after the abolition of serfdom, in the second — after gaining an independent state. Both images are deeply humanistic because they are directed at the person.
Вид експозиції виставки «На межі. Українське мистецтво 1985–2004» (2015), PinchukArtCentre
Надано PinchukArtCentre
Such defenselessness is reflected in Bratkov’s series “Birds” (1997), in which the artist alternates photographs of children from orphanages with shots of bird taxidermies from natural history museums.
The feeling of abandonment, alienation, and uselessness becomes even more intense considering that the gazes of all the children, no matter how we step back from the photograph or examine it, are unambiguously and poignantly directed at the viewer.
The image of the child is not accidental. “Children were important heroes because it was the turn of the century” [14], Serhiy Bratkov analyzes that time. In the image of the child, philosopher Boris Buden sees a political metaphor of post-communist society: “In the ideological structure of post-communism, the metaphor of the child plays a special role. It means the idea of a new beginning, innocence inherent in the newly discovered democracy, as the revolutions of 1989 are often described. At the same time, children are the image of infantile Eastern European societies freed from totalitarianism and not yet of age in history” [15]. Bratkov created the series “Drug Addicts” (2001) in a juvenile detention colony, redefining the concept of childhood. As Boris Buden noted, the child here is not a defenseless social unit needing care but, on the contrary, an embodiment of danger. What does a juvenile delinquent who has grown up bring to society? Using a 6 × 6 camera, Bratkov creates double exposures, achieving the effect of a blurred, dual reality, as if conveying a view of reality poisoned by narcotic substances.
Roman Pyatkovka embodied the idea of gaining democracy anew as a metaphor for an immature new beginning in the series “New Hero,” created at the end of the USSR’s existence in 1988. In this series, Pyatkovka embodies the image of informal, protest youth, whose protest lies in indifference, disregard for norms, appearance, clothing, and the declaration of the value of the moment, which is all that needs to be valued in life — here and now. Over each photographic image from the life of Kharkiv punks, Pyatkovka applies fragments of lyrics from popular rock bands. In these images and “the pulsation of veins,” Viktor Tsoi’s infamous “We are waiting for changes” (“Мы ждем перемен”) already resounds strongly. The desire to savor life without borders, curiosity, intrigue, nihilism, the affirmation of freedom through appearance and behavior contrasting with the gray reality, the feeling of “after us, the flood” — in such a context of the era of change, a new hero was formed.
Twenty years later, the SOSka group created the project “Dreamers” (2008), in which Buden’s thesis about a young society in formation acquires particular eloquence and expressiveness. If in Pyatkovka’s work this was the rebellion of a young organism against any dogmas and clichés outside political circumstances (in 1988, political circumstances were such that a mohawk or ripped jeans were enough to express rebellion), then in 2008, SOSka’s work raises the question of feeling out one’s own identity and oneself in this world.
In this series, the artists turned to the teenage “emo” subculture. Their heroes seem to levitate over the Derzhprom building in Kharkiv, asking themselves the eternal existential question about their own purpose in this world. Both Pyatkovka and SOSka speak about the new hero, about his embodiment through musical subcultures as a way to oppose the banality of life, despite normalization mechanisms and dogmas.
Today, the question of heroism, on the one hand, seems to have become clearer. There is no need to ask anymore. The agenda again includes the fight against the enemy, “patriotism,” and the homeland. On the other hand, perhaps, quite the opposite, soon the centennial generation will completely cancel such questions. And it is unclear what gesture and hero are possible in the future?
