Our day-to-day life has long been equipped with various photographic machines, of which the least sophisticated are snap-shot cameras, film from which is processed in automatic laboratories.

Certainly, photographic machines make the process of creating a photographic picture much easier. There is no longer need for a darkroom, enlargers, developer, fixer, water etc.

Of course, the abandoning of the whole cycle of nurturing a photographic picture is just one consequence of the recent technological changes. At the same time, technological innovations, which shortened the distance between taking a picture and getting the print, have changed the status of a photographic statement.

The picture in the kaleidoscope does not record the uniqueness of the moment. It just records the moment itself and quickly moves to the next one. Any series of snapshot pictures testifies to the fact that this kind of photography is informative rather than representative.

Even photographs "from the machine" might still be considered human. But they lack the actual human presence, which is taken out by the machine. We are no longer in the picture.

The hand, which rotates the kaleidoscope is a machine manipulator, similar to a characterless chip in an automatic snapshot camera or a unit inside an automatic processing machine.

One can try to stop the rotation of the Kaleidoscope to see what will come out as a result.

The project "Photography from Machine" is an exhibition of experimental images by three Minsk-based photographers, Vladimir Kozlov, Daniil Parnyuk and Valery Savulchik.

The project is based on the idea that modern photographic technology is of an esthetic value itself. The technological production line, which begins inside snap-shot cameras as well as more sophisticated professional ones, and is then continued in automatic photo laboratories has its own aura as far as meaning and events are concerned.

Kozlov's images explore the kinematics of the machine. The moving of a photographic camera creates an effect contrary to pictorialism. A point is transformed into a line, making one image similar to a sequence of movie frames. As a result, the composition of most images is blurry, being a t the same time put in rhyme by the aggressive realism of automatic printing.

Parnyuk's images depict the energy of the machine. His psychedelic photographs draw the viewer into an imaginary space of high speed. It's a disco in which a combination of machine and body is dancing. An acoustic analogy to his images may be big beat, ambient or acid jazz.

The horizontal movements of the Machine in Kozlov's pictures are contrasting with the vertical incisions of its functions explored by Savulchik. His photographs, made by means of microcircuit, explore the discreteness of what can be seen from a short distance, creating what can be called machine-like formalism dominated by a single-shot principle. His images form a series of still-life, the objects of which are distorted high-tech products.



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Translated by Vladimir Kozlov