{"id":157465,"date":"2025-06-04T12:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T12:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/157465\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T12:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T12:24:11","slug":"images-of-loneliness-russian-photographer-alexander-gronsky-on-what-its-like-to-document-a-country-closing-in-on-itself-meduza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/157465\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Images of loneliness\u2019 Russian photographer Alexander Gronsky on what it\u2019s like to document a country closing in on itself \u2014 Meduza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Gronsky is an award-winning photographer who, despite the political repressions and society\u2019s increasing militarization, continues to live and work in Russia. He has two roles in Meduza\u2019s \u201cNo\u201d exhibition<\/a>: in addition to contributing photos from his series \u201cMoscow 2022\u2013,\u201d\u00a0he also appears in the documentary section, interviewed by playwright Mikhail Durnenkov. Below, Meduza presents a text version of Gronsky\u2019s monologue from the project. To watch the original interview \u2014 along with monologues from journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, writer Zhenia Berezhna, and others \u2014 visit \u201cNo\u201d at Berlin\u2019s Kunstraum Kreuzberg\/Bethanien gallery anytime before July 6.<\/p>\n

My first creative experience as a child was wanting to draw the entire view from my window, the whole panorama, all the homes and the park. I didn\u2019t know how to draw, it was hard. But I had this need for a complete picture of the world, a complete artistic event, a complete drawing. The tree, sun or house standing on their own just didn\u2019t cut it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I continue to work in that spirit today \u2014 like a Google Street View machine that assembles giant panoramas.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found myself, of course, in a wild situation, but I\u2019m the best-equipped individual to handle it. I have experience that has prepared me, or maybe more accurately, a certain random but relevant set of qualities: I know how to exist on my own, to barely communicate with the outside world, and I know how not to panic about being arrested. I feel well-suited for my current role. Of course that doesn\u2019t cancel out my dismay at what\u2019s happening. At the same time, it\u2019s probably the first time in my life that I\u2019ve felt social responsibility. It sounds silly, but if not me, then who?<\/p>\n

In my field, it\u2019s like I\u2019ve been left in charge: if I don\u2019t shoot something, don\u2019t record it, no one else will. Or maybe someone will suddenly think to do it, but they\u2019ll be too late. These are new experiences for me, and it\u2019s quite exciting. It\u2019s like catching a ball out of nowhere. I was minding my own business, walking around the stadium, and suddenly there\u2019s a ball. Now I just have to run with it\u00a0because there\u2019s no one else to pass to.<\/p>\n

Every day, I read about horrific events, but I can picture them in my mind. I understand that it\u2019s happening somewhere out there, but fortunately I don\u2019t usually witness them directly. Ever so often a catastrophe actually happens in close proximity to me. The abstract world of the news and everyday reality converge. I\u2019m not a press photographer, so it\u2019s a strange situation for me. As a rule, I want to step back, make a wider frame, and show not only the fire that will make the news, but also the inconspicuous yard around it. It\u2019s as if major events can pierce through the surrounding reality.<\/p>\n

I started to feel something similar when the discourse and images on TV started to seep into the landscape, onto digital billboards in the midst of trees and garages. It was like reality was floating, and that hidden, unseen world that we talk about in the news, but which we almost never encounter in everyday life, appeared inside of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before, when I lived without a television, I almost never came into contact with news from [Russian state news broadcaster] Channel One in my everyday life. Now I can\u2019t hide from it: there are propaganda announcements on digital billboards. The border that allowed people to go into internal emigration has been breached.<\/p>\n

At the same time, some of the statements on television have ceased to function as messages \u2014 they\u2019re more like ornaments made of words. New euphemisms emerge. For example, when there\u2019s a drone attack absolutely all media outlets will say: \u201cDebris [from shot down drones] fell.\u201d Why does debris fall so precisely? We know the answer to this question and simply put the phrase in quotation marks.<\/p>\n

But during real-life communication, there inevitably comes a moment when you don\u2019t know where your interlocutor puts those quotes. It\u2019s interesting to try to determine where, exactly, they\u2019re implied.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t always understand how people see my photographs. I understand perfectly how people who have been out of the country for the last three years see them \u2014 many of them write me comments. But how do people who live in Russia, especially people with different viewpoints, see them \u2014 that\u2019s unclear. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s permissible to show these photos in Russia right now. What do they show? Does anyone see in my photos a denigration of reality? In three years, I\u2019ve never had any serious complaints. Maybe I\u2019m within the bounds of what\u2019s permitted, or maybe no one has yet to pay any serious attention to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think that my work has some effect, above all because there seems to be an audience for it. A sense of unity, a sense of connection is of the highest value right now. Let\u2019s say two people meet up, one will say, \u201cI like Gronsky\u2019s photographs,\u201d and the other will answer, \u201cMe too.\u201d If this brings them closer together, if they can share these images of loneliness with each other, then perhaps that\u2019s my social contribution.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is open through July 6 \u2014 and there, or online, you can pick up the\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0we published especially for the occasion, which includes this piece along with other essays, artist interviews, and exhibition materials.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Text and photographs by Alexander Gronsky<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Gronsky is an award-winning photographer who, despite the political repressions and society\u2019s increasing militarization, continues to live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15,7888,7883,7886,7875,7868,7880,7870,7881,7887,7876,7864,7871,7865,7873,7874,7866,7869,7867,7885,7879,7872,7884,7882,7878,7877],"class_list":{"0":"post-157465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-7888","15":"tag-7883","16":"tag-7886","17":"tag-7875","18":"tag-7868","19":"tag-7880","20":"tag-7870","21":"tag-7881","22":"tag-7887","23":"tag-7876","24":"tag-7864","25":"tag-7871","26":"tag-7865","27":"tag-7873","28":"tag-7874","29":"tag-7866","30":"tag-7869","31":"tag-7867","32":"tag-7885","33":"tag-7879","34":"tag-7872","35":"tag-7884","36":"tag-7882","37":"tag-7878","38":"tag-7877"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114625083128672299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}