For several years now, Alla Esipovich has worked for a glossy magazine, moving in the world of photo sessions, photo stories and photo portraits. The format naturally dictates both the subject-matter (interesting situations, elegant objects and successful people) and the optics. It was only Walter Benjamin who wrote about the optically unconscious; any professional photo-editor from the world of gloss and glamour takes the optical line of his or her magazine extremely seriously and consciously. All this represents more or less successful versions of the optics of desire. The aim of such photo images is to provoke the impulse of possession, tuning the viewer’s corporeal-motor-perceptive experience into this particular wavelength — to awake the desire to choose, reach out and touch. There is a judicial term for this — liability or burdening circumstances. For example, if a property is up for sale, the burdening circumstances might be paying off old debts or clearing up the territory. Glossy-magazine optics represent desire (the desire to possess) as a burden of life.

As a photographer, Alla Esipovich appears to have felt the need to break free of this chain of burdening circumstances — even in the magazine situation. I have seen the "waste products of glamour" in her archives — photographs of people who have "slipped out of the frame"; models not posing for the camera, celebrities taking a break from being celebrities. There was no special intention of peeping or catching anyone unawares. These shots are indeed waste products, remainders or what is known in production as scrap. They were, nevertheless, printed by the artist, perused, and appear to be important to her. They help to refresh the vision and retain a sense of reality, bringing out something separating the real from the desirable.

I would not go quite so far as to claim that this book of photographs is a form of reaction to the glossy magazine experience or that the photographer, tiring of the world of beauty, sought something harsh and crude; a slap in the face of public taste. The reasons behind the creation of the works published in this album are much more serious. I believe that the importance of the magazine experience lies elsewhere. It taught Alla to visually articulate the very concept of burdening circumstances and to reflect them as a special theme. I have referred to desire as a life burden in connection with glamour photography. The theme of these particular photographs is, in fact, more significant or, I should say, existential. The desire for possession can, ultimately, be overcome and extirpated. Yet one cannot overcome physical ageing, physical disintegration or one’s own mortal shell. The physical as a life burden — that, in general features, is the theme visualised by Alla Esipovich.

We see photographs of elderly people, representing various professions and different social classes. All this is straight photography, without any computer working or printing ploys. The fashionable media nuance is unrequired; the task here is something quite different. It is cardinally important that there should be nothing staged; nothing "stagey". There is also the ethical problem regarding the manipulation of old men and women and making them pose. Yet the artist does not make them do this. If they themselves want to pose, regarding the situation of self-demonstration and self-presentation as some way of manifesting their own identity, they are welcome to do so.

The social aspect? This is also present in the series. It is impossible to live in society and be free of society, according to Vladimir Lenin, the creator of the very society in which the heroes and heroines spent most of their lives. There is indeed much that is Soviet and much that is social here — in the outer appearances of the heroes and heroines, in the patterns of their behaviour and in the typical interiors. There are, however, no Conceptual or Sots Art accents, even though the material could have led onto this. On one photograph of an interior, for example, dolls co-exist with images of the Madonna and Lenin. The attention is not, however, specially focused on this. As Russian artist Eric Bulatov used to say, this is the "parallel reality" of our existence — and no more. There are also signs of a local cultural contiguity. The photographs are all of Leningraders, who only recently became Peterburgers. While these aspects sometimes attract our attention, they are not the most important things. What is? Why does the artist reject so many attractive — media, staged-playful, social-emblematic — baits, to which both socially advanced and simple viewers are so prone?

Depicted in one format and almost always en face, we see portraits of elderly people. Some of them are depicted in a quite traditional manner — recognisable types, characteristic and characterising environments, their behaviour before the camera reflecting their own lives and values. The type of active Soviet pensioner, hale and hearty, familiar to viewers from a whole range of cultural traditions — from films like True Friends to such genre paintings as Fyodor Reshetnikov’s Arrived for the Holidays. An old Leningrad artist, wary and distrustful, wrapped up in himself. An intellectual woman with a lap dog.

Alla Esipovich is not satisfied with recognisable types. With the full compliance of her models, she signs the photographs with their names, patronymics, surnames and professions. Sometimes there is no need to sign the works, when the subject is well known; as in the case of the actress Tatyana Lvovna Piletskaya — an outstanding photographic portrait, by the way. This is the only way to photograph an actress in old age — in a double time exposure of then and now. There are no montage fade-ins, reminiscences or other assorted vulgarities; "then" simply continues to live "today" - in the smile no matter what, the erect back, the striking and slightly theatrical posture and the elegantly shod feet. A completely narrative shot, subject formative and ready for mass perception. A solid, honest-to-goodness tale of a real human being.

Another photograph portrays a couple of diminutive stage stars. Even in their twilight, they remain droll, going about their flat as if they were still on the stage or in the circus ring. She hangs from a central-heating pipe as if it were a trapeze; he dons a stage costume as if about to perform a number. A genre portrait not without humour.

At this point, however, the genre ceases to be equivalent to itself. Something different appears through the tale. We now see that these "everyday" photographic portraits are far more involved. They only seem to be tales of lives, fates, time, themselves, professions and even a little a bit about our nation. In actual fact, there was possibly not even a story — or, if there was, this was not the aim, but the raison d'être for launching a form of procession; not a story, but a show. This becomes clear when looking at the photograph of the couple. The course of the story, which should have its own subject, texture and outcome, is abrogated. A different scale invades the small flat, where a tiny woman hangs idiotically from a pipe. This is the point where the tale gives way to the show.

The most shocking part of the series begins at this point. Alla Esipovich photographs old women in a state of undress or in the process of undressing. Some are indifferent or impassive; others pose openly. What Bertolt Brecht would call "showing a show" - not only posing naked, but also representing the very process of this show. Why do I use the word shocking? Art students mechanically draw naked old women. Alla has managed to remove this mechanicalness. It is not the ageing flesh or nudity per se that is shocking. Launching a series mechanism — requiring a "running approach" in the form of the "normal" photographs — the artist also launches a processional ceremonial. We are not shown an individual body or a concrete moment of revealing this body; we are shown the very process of the degradation of the body, which we inevitably deflect onto ourselves — hence the shock.

The shock is intensified by the historical-cultural circumstances and the canons dictating the perception of the disintegration of the flesh. While classical Russian literature gave several acute images of the wasting away of the body — take Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of lvan Ilich for example — its Soviet successor opposed images of the flesh and the destruction of the flesh. Alla’s photographs address both of these images. We have still not entirely shaken off the Soviet canons dictating our perception of this issue, replaced by the social immortality category, explaining the reaction of repulsion.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, photography overcame several stigmas in its relationship with the body. Robert Maplethorpe and Sally Mann were ostracised for their articulation of the sexual-corporeal. Hanna Wilke was ostracised for her articulation of the end of the body. Accused of a lack of ethics when chronicling the process of her own mother dying, she managed to overcome these imputations by courageously photographing the process of her own illness and death.

Another existential aspect arises in connection with Alla Esipovich’s work. The logical development of her photography indeed prepares us for this. What is particularly striking is the unstaged readiness of the models to reveal themselves and engage in self-representation. Perversion or deliberate provocation? I think the matter lies elsewhere. The artist shows the resistance of the female to the most radical stages of the ageing processes. And radical resistance implies radical measures. Mobilising gender and body memories and posing as a way of manifesting one’s own (female) identity is a gesture of resistance — radical and manly resistance.


The series of photographs of Alexei Ingelevich continues and develops the theme of the physical as a burden of life. Man is accorded a form of corporeality and art has always been interested in corporeal anomalies, ranging from Diego Velázquez s dwarves to Frederico Fellini’s midgets. This line is, nevertheless, reverent and humanistic. There are also the Romantic and Baroque branches, such as the turbulent metamorphoses of the flesh in Joel-Peter Witkin’s phantasms. Alla essentially resolves the familiar task of overcoming the trauma and burden of the flesh through the power of the spirit. The artist’s good fortune is demonstrated by how naturally the hero of this series — Alexei Ingelevich — resolves this existentialist task, doing so by life.

Alla Esipovich views her hero in traditional genre situations — with his family, the earth and animals. The popular Russian subject of deciding which path to follow is even employed, involving a small human figure, a road, a high horizon and the sky. This cannot, however, be regarded as burdening circumstances. All this is normal, natural, everyday life. Yet such projected and deliberately staged circumstances as dressing up, open theatrical posing and "symbolisation" of the situations also appear normal when the hero is involved. Theatre is theatre, carnival is carnival and the illustration of speculations is illustration. The subject leads his own, very convincing life within the boundaries posed by existence, bearing his generic trauma with great dignity. Alla has found the right person to round off this theme.

I have great respect for Alla Esipovich’s works, now on show in this photo album. Tough, tight and impartial, they are not afraid to encounter misunderstanding — as inevitably happens when photography represents not what is desirable, but what is real.