Moskau

Moscow

 

From September 26 to October 5, 1991, the five Hanover-based photographers Peter Gauditz, Magdalena Tooren-Wolff, Volker Uphoff, Manfred Zimmermann, and Joachim Giesel travel with the Forum Photographie Design to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. They undertake their journey at a historic moment—four weeks after the so-called August coup by reactionary forces against President Mikhail Gorbachev, who, through Perestroika, sought to open the Soviet Union politically, socially, and economically and had agreed to German reunification.

In Moscow and Saint Petersburg, they are received, among others, by their colleagues Alexander Koksharov from Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Makarov (IMA-Press), and Evgeny Matveev from Moscow, as well as Vladimir Egorov from Ivanovo. This trip is a return visit, after Soviet photographers had been in Hanover in May 1991 on Giesel’s initiative and had presented their work in June on the occasion of the city’s 750th anniversary under the title Blende auf – Hannover aus Moskauer Sicht (Aperture Open – Hanover from a Moscow Perspective) in a branch of the Dresdner Bank. The cultural-political initiative is supported, among others, by the City of Hanover, the State of Lower Saxony, Incom Bank in Moscow, and the Moscow photo agency IMA-Press. After returning from the Soviet Union, the Hanover photographers present their own exhibition Augenblicke am Wegesrand. Schnappschüsse im Vorübergehen (Moments by the Roadside. Snapshots in Passing) from November 13 to 27, 1991, in the Dresdner Bank. A travel report describes how the photographers assume different roles during the trip—as tourists, contemporary witnesses, lobbyists, and cultural mediators. At first glance, they follow a typical tourist itinerary in Moscow—Bolshoi Theatre, Kremlin, Lenin Mausoleum, State Circus, television tower, etc. In Saint Petersburg, they visit the Hermitage and a ballet academy. The group is privileged, led past all queues to historical sites and treated to the finest food and drink—the “table is laid with caviar, vodka, champagne, salads, and meat.” At the same time, they witness the hardship of the Russian population suffering from the supply crisis. The highlight of the trip is their exhibition Hannoversche Fotografen (Hanover Photographers) held from September 28 to October 5 in the premises of the State Cultural Fund not far from Red Square. Interest from the Soviet side is considerable—not so much in the exhibited works, but in professional practices of industrial, fashion, advertising, and lifestyle photography: “Everyone is curious about how market economy works. Advertising, the great unknown, is topic number one. We are ambassadors of the dazzling, exciting Western world.” Giesel also uses the trip for networking, as evidenced by business cards he stores in an empty cover of a Soviet passport. The focus of his photographic interest lies in the everyday life of a society in transition, in theatre and ballet, and in a particular way in (toppled) monuments.

MARTIN SCHIEDER

 

| Waganowa-Ballettakademie (Vaganova Ballet Academy), Saint Petersburg, October 2, 1991 (Silver gelatin baryta paper, 2024)

| Gestürzte Statue des Geheimdienstgründers Feliks Dzierżyński (Toppled statue of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky), Moscow, September 30, 1991 (Silver gelatin baryta paper, 2024)

| Stalin-Büste (Stalin bust), Moscow, September 30, 1991 (Silver gelatin baryta paper, 2024)