Lyudmila Zinchenko

Russia,France

How to explain first to myself what am I doing? Am I shooting the life? Am I watching the life? Thinking about life? We can try all the forms of language, use all the cameras, open up the language of new media, but say nothing new about life. Because the life its self is not about life…

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    1991-98

    Some work made during 1991-98

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    6х6

    1994-97

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    Alfabet of hands

    1998-2000

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    Moscow -Tver - St.Peter

    1999-2003

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    Home

    This is the house where I spent my childhood. In the first part of the project it still lives it's own life. But in a while it will become empty. And only things, the timekeepwrs, will remain....

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    Sambo 2007

    One day I was invited to film the Moscow Sambo Cup among police officers. I’m not a big expert in sports photography and took a pinhole camera for the shoot, although the clients didn’t really like this violation of order.

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    Blue dream.Fairy tale. (2008-09)

    In the largest city of the largest kingdom, where the times of dreams had long ago finished, lived a girl from primeval forest and industrial apotheosis.

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    Unobjective Moscow (2004-2005)

    Pinhole

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    Balkans 2011

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    Cities (2006-...)

    Great cities in Europe are similar to each other. This project is about their differences, the individuality of each. And it may be that what it is in the representation of the people, it is not living.

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    Winter 2012

    A surge of civil activity occurred in Russia in year 2012. Enormous amount of people expressed their dissent with the results of parliamentary and presidential elections as well as the resentment with Putin's politics. Camera obscura that was used for picturing these rallies cannot produce a clear image. From the author's point of view this feature represents the character of the opposition movement, where there were no clear aims.


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    Garden of Lost Dreams

    pinhole, hand silver print, blue tonner


    2007; 2013

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    NATIVE TONGUE. Chapter III. Russian Forest CODE FAILURE (2011-13)

    I turn to the archetype of the Russian landscape, to the works that I remember from childhood from pictures in the Native Speech, postcards, calendars, etc. For many of us, these images, reproduced in huge quantities, were symbols of the country where we were born, its cultural code.


    As you know, if you open a file frequently, a glitch may occur. A program error that causes the image to change or even be destroyed. CODE FAILURE

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    Bylinka

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    Friday

    This project was filmed in one of the courtyards in the center of Moscow. An ordinary courtyard at first glance, since the mosque hidden behind the houses may not be noticed. But when Friday comes ... I don't draw conclusions. I was just worried about the shadows in the snow. This mysterious pattern of Islam in the Moscow snow.

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    Embroideress 2014

    Director: LYUSYA MATVEEVA


    The film consists of five short stories: «Helicopter», «Sunday», «Doggie-photographer», «Mausoleum» and «Apocalypses». They are united by one general action – the author embroiders these stories. This is a reference to the Ancient Greek myth about the goddesses of fate, which spinning the thread of human life.

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    Photobook "Russian forest"

    For all nations that can formulate their relation to the forest , the latter has never been simply a zone of dense vegetation. The forest beckons and entices. As we know from fairy-tales, the forest can be munificent… or it can kill. Countless myths, legends and superstitions are connected with the forest. The forest is a mystery, a place of power and a sacred domain. Perhaps we attribute such qualities to the forest, because its dark and desolate thickets and its luminous meadows resemble the inner world of man. Like the latter, the forest is full of secrets and contradictions.


    In the final account, the forest from Cherbourg to Murom is a territory of freedom. All the more in a country whose larger part is covered by forest: in Russia, forest is more than forest. It is part of the Russian national ethnic code – the forest itself as well as its images in classical landscapes.


    Perhaps we are this forest ourselves? A forest without boundaries, where happiness can turn into tragedy, grief into hope, despair into love, the sacred into the vile, and doom into… salvation. This forest is infinite, without beginning or end.

    Liudmila Zinchenko

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    Potato

    https://vimeo.com/145420078


    This half-acted, half-documentary film with elements of absurdity, takes place in the Russian province of today.


    The entire life of main character Nadezhda Konstantinovna, circles around potatoes-- the main staple food.


    The story takes place under the background of never-ending propaganda in the media. And once the potato grows...


    Director: Lucia Matveyeva, Length: 21 minutes, Year of production: 2015

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    Temporal photography (2016-2017)

    Photographs we are used to are mostly made using really short exposure time. Human visual system doesn’t allow us to distinguish such short moments as photographic camera easily does with it’s 1/30 or 1/250 or 1/1000 shutter speed. The goal of our project is to bring photographic vision closer to human vision by embedding temporality in it. Visually time could be defined thru motion, which appears unsharp and blurry in photographs made using simple long exposures. In our work moving or changing objects are shown sharp and clear, and unchanged areas are on a contrary blurry. For that purpose we are using soft- ware called TIMETRACE specially created for this occasion by Pavel Volkov.


    The founder of this genre can be named Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), one of the founders of chronophotography.

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    Lucid dreams

    Kalina Krasnaya's debut book “Lucid dreams” is a book of short stories based on the author’s dream material. The surrealism of Soviet history, its ghostly and phantasmal nature are combined here with the existential horror of technological modernity. The author’s insights and intuitions either become like a dream, then turn into a farce and a pure game of language, a carnival of possible historical events, a terrible joke. At the same time, you can see the fragile hope for the human and their unlimited abilities.

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    Exhibition At the and of the word

    Exhibition in the gallery "Elektrozavod" together with Denis Mustafin, February 2020, Moscow

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    GREENING

    Every spring billions of flowers are planted on the streets, squares and boulevards. Flower beds, flower gardens, shrubs and other items of the urban landscaping program decorate the approaches to government and law enforcement agencies, pleasing to the eye. Pink flower in a cloud gives the citizens peace, a sense of security and confidence in the future - the facade of the state must be beautiful. In the summer of 2020 I picked flowers near the buildings where law enforcement agencies are located, squeezed juice from those petals, then applied to paper and printed portraits of political prisoners and those persecuted for their religion. The color of each photo depends on the flower bed, the inflorescences of which it is printed, and it is obvious that the palette is dominated by pale lilac and pink tones. An exception is the green portrait of Irina Slavina, a journalist who committed suicide by self-immolation outside the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Her portrait was printed with emulsion from the leaves of decorative bushes that adorn the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.


    Under the influence of external factors, these images will disappear quickly enough, and the green portrait will be the first to disappear, just like these people, no matter what they do, even at the cost of their lives, they quickly disappear from our common memory.

    13 A4 photos, bioemulsion. Video 5 min, camera by Denis Mustafin, Elena Artemenko


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    Wonderfull adventure of Nils

    A modern interpretation of Selma Lagerlöf's fairy tale using surveillance cameras. Movie, 26 min


    https://vimeo.com/297365462

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    the same blood. 2023

    I know very little about her. Only that on March 13, 2022, Russian troops shot up the bus in which she was trying to evacuate from under Chernigov, and that we have almost the same last name. It is a fairly common name in Ukraine and Russia, whose citizens have long referred to each other as sisters and brothers. Until one of the sisters decided that she had the right to subdue the other: to kill, rob, rape, destroy, burn, drown. Trying to cope with the feeling of guilt for what the country where I was born and raised is doing, I began to print photographs of Russian military crimes in Ukraine with my own blood. The artistic qualities did not really matter to me - the process itself was important. The sight of this red fluid conveyed something more than can be shown on the news. So, picking out photos on the internet, I came across this woman who died. And although I know little about Maria Zenchenko, like other numerous victims of Russian aggression, I know that we are of the same blood.


    Liudmila Zinchenko



    le même sang


    Je ne sais rien d'elle. Je sais seulement que le 13 mars 2022, les troupes russes ont tiré sur le bus dans lequel elle voyageait avec d'autres civils tentant d'évacuer près de la ville de Tchernigov. Nous avons presque le même nom de famille. C'est un nom de famille assez courant en Ukraine et en Russie. Les citoyens de ces pays se sont depuis longtemps appelés frères et sœurs. Jusqu'à ce qu'un pays décide qu'il a le droit d'en soumettre un autre, de tuer, voler, violer, détruire, brûler, noyer. Confronté à la culpabilité face aux actions du pays dans lequel je suis né et j’ai grandi, j’ai commencé à imprimer avec mon propre sang des photographies des crimes de guerre russes en Ukraine. Je ne me souciais pas vraiment du résultat, c'était le processus lui-même qui était important. La vue de ce liquide rouge en disait plus que ce qui pouvait être montré aux informations. Et puis un jour, en cherchant des photos sur Internet, je suis tombé sur le portrait d'une femme assassinée qui portait le même nom de famille que moi. Je connais peu de choses sur Maria Zenchenko et sur de nombreuses victimes de l’agression russe, mais je sais que je partage le même sang qu’elles.


    Liudmila Zinchenko

Lyudmila Zinchenko

Photographer. Filmmaker. Writer. (Pseudonymous: Lyusya Matveeva, Kalina Krasnya) In the 1990s she worked as a photographer in the various print media, engaging later in the art. In the 2000s she began to seriously engage in art photography. Shoot camera obscura. She made prints from the original negatives of the classics of Soviet photography. Now she teaches this discipline at Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (Moscow). Top solo and group exhibitions: “The balance of power” Dusseldorf, gallery on the corner, 2006 “Необъективная Москва” (Subjectivity Moscow), Museum of Architecture, Moscow, 2008 “Населенный пункт” gallery White Cube (2009 Omsk, Siberia) “Приближение” (Approximation. Moscow-Paris) gallery Photographer (Moscow) and Russian House (Paris) 2010 “Необъективная Москва” (Subjectivity Moscow), Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt, 2010 “Родная речь” (Native tongue) photos, installation, video. Artplay, Moscow. 2013 Curatorial project “Дали” (Distance), Fabrika, Moscow, 2013 “Музей великих надежд” (Museum of Great Hopes), Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod, 2015 “Русский лес” (Russian Forest), Exhibition Hall “Gate”, Kaliningrad, 2017 “На краю света” (At the end of the world), gallery Electrozavod, Moscow, 2020 Awards: grand-prize Silver Camera (Moscow 2002; 2006) Published in Kommersant, Newsweek (USA), Courrier International, Liberation, Le Figaro (France). Lyusya Matveeva: Participant of MIFF 2014 (“Embroiderer") 2014 Best domestic film of the video festival in Kansk ("Embroiderer") 2014 Participant of the Berlinale, Forum expanded program 2015 and 2016 (films "Embroiderer" and "Potato"), Film Festival "Spirit of Fire” - a special jury award "For the search for beauty in digital noise" (film "The Wonderful Adventures of Niels"), Khanty Mansiysk, Siberia, 2019 Kalina Krasnaya: a book of short prose "Lucid dreams". Publishing house “Красная ласточка” (Krasnaya swallow), Nizhny Novgorod, 2020

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Prose texts at proza.ru, Agency.photgrapher.ru, Six images photo gallery, Moscow House of Photography, Art Strelka Moscow