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| Sebastiao Salgado, Churchgate Station, Mumbai, 1995 |
On entering the Polka Galerie I thought I
must have missed the Salgado exhibition as the space was filled with the
Russian Alexander Gronsky’s photographs. But this tiny storefront gallery in
the heart of the Marais opens out onto a courtyard which hides a whole world of
workshops, ateliers, as well as another exhibition space in the back. A walk
over cobblestones led me to the atelier and Salgado’s wonderful images.
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| Alexander Gronsky, Novye Mytishchi I, 2010 |
The pairing of these two photographers is
interesting, even if it is not intended to inspire comparisons. Gronsky’s works
are sparse, capturing the stasis and infinite nothingness of Soviet Russia that
has never quite left the face of a country supposed to be revelling in its
post-perestroika promises. Expanses of white snowy landscapes, isolated
industrial estates, undeveloped land surrounding banks of apartment blocks,
the same building over and over again, are the horizon line in Gronsky’s
photographs. With these worlds as their backdrops Muscovites are shown to spend
their leisure time in the images of Pastoral.
Gronsky’s images reminded me of Mitch Epstein’s Americans who relax in the most
deadly of environments, oblivious to the terror that surrounds them. Gronsky’s
are like the Communist version of Epstein’s critique of industrial and post-industrial
America. But as the title suggests, Gronsky’s photographs are not critical, they
do not show situations that are urgent. Indeed, there is a timelessness and a
bucolic ease to Gronsky’s scenes that make for an “everything is okay” vision.
Thus, at the same time, they reminded me of the realist images of the
post-1980s German photographers such as Andreas Gursky or Thomas Struth. They capture
the same objective emptiness that marks the contemporary world.
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| Alexander Gronsky, Strogino I, 2009 |
However, Gronsky’s photographs don’t have
the edge that makes Epstein’s, Gursky’s or Struth’s photographs fascinating.
While they do venture into the weird and wonderful world of Russia, itself an
abstraction and aberration, they do not have the aesthetic tension that would
make them compelling. There is a sense in which the environment overwhelms the
figures, comfortably framed by classical representations in which the horizon
has simply become concrete. Ultimately, I didn’t find much of anything to keep me
wondering, keep me looking again at these worlds. They were well composed, but
not compelling.
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| Sebastiao Salgado, Greater Burhan Oil Field, Kuwait, 1991 |
In stark contrast, Salgado’s photographs are
so intense and so complicated that there is not a moment to breath and not even
a trace of emptiness. Even when in Gronsky’s photographs there are groups of
people engaging in activities that might create noise, they are silent. Salgados
images, however, are noisy, cacophonous and filled with an intense sensuality.
The train station in Mumbai is heaving – there is not a slither of space
between one person and the next. We feel the heat of the burning oil wells in Greater Burhan Oil Field, KuwaitI, 1991.
And we feel the discomfort of the dirt that covers the humans as they fight the
man made nightmare. Unlike suburban Moscow the far off worlds that Salgado
photographs are fiery, alive, not cold and isolated. One could argue that they
also depict alienation in urban spaces, it’s just of a different kind.
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| Sebastiao Salgado, Serra Pelada, State of Para, Brazil, 1986 |
Salgado’s photographs exhibited at Polka
depict nightmares that we know from futuristic films, such as Elysium, 2013. In a photograph such
as Serra
Peladail State of Para Brazil, 1986, there’s no difference between the
Hollywood fantasy and the reality of a world in which people are human slaves suffering
the dystopia of a capitalism gone awry. Salgado depicts other worlds that we
have never been to, or if we have, we are still surprised that this world
exists because we don’t know it in this way. He shows an “otherness” that is
often created in the techniques of his photography. Works of wonder, whether it’s animals, an
elephant running through a forest or the human subjection necessary to the
apocalyptic Brazil, we are watching wonder take place. It is just that it is a
wonder drenched with sadness and anger because it’s not just poverty at
stake, it’s the exploitation to the point of devastation, manufactured by us,
in the West.
All images copyright Polka Galerie
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