Random Excellence: Elena Chernyshova

Photo by Elena Chernyshova

Think you knew the world? Lensculture's latest find (via the Circulation(s) festival in Paris) is Elena Chernyshova, who created a documentary, equal parts magical and sinister, about Norilsk. I, for one, had never heard of Norilsk. It's a Siberian mining city that is the world's northernmost city (of 100,000 population or more) and the seventh most polluted.

Do you happen to recall from your photo history class that platinum/palladium printing paper was suddenly in short supply after the outbreak of WWI? It caused Frederick Evans to give up photography. Trade with Russia had been disrupted and he could no longer get his preferred papers. (You could buy commercially prepared platinum printing paper back then. Never since, except very briefly when Rob Steinberg tried to revive it.) Well, Norilsk was where the platinum and palladium came from.

Note that sometimes, "Random Excellence" here on TOP is a recommendation of a single picture. Not this time—try to find some time today to look at the photographer's whole set on Lensculture. It's titled "Days of Night—Nights of Day." A wondrous documentary project, with a strange tension between beauty and horror.

Elena was born in Moscow and is now based in France.

And in the TOP file, regular reader Will von Dauster had two photographs published to illustrate a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) article about the latest Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI). Will used a Sony A7 and Zeiss 24–70mm and an A6000 with the Zeiss 24mm. Here's the article, and the whole shoot, which took place at the David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Lesley: "Elena's work is stunning, but the real find for me was LensCulture, a site I hadn't seen before. There's only one problem with the site—I know that I will spend perhaps too much time mining its depths. Thank you."

Comments

[Bil Mitchell]

Absolutely WONDERFUL!
Images #28 and #37 can easily stand comparison with Cartier-Bresson's best.

[Ed Grossman]

Norilsk looks like a forbidding place to call home. The people born there have been dealt a very bad hand. Chernyshova's shooting and editing tells their story well. I'm reminded just how lucky I am. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

[John Krumm]

Now that was an excellent photo essay. Great photographs, clear and interesting captions, and it's well presented visually on the computer(no pop-up captions that I hate). Plus I don't recall seeing Lens Culture before, so thanks for that.

[Stan B.]

One of the perpetual ironies endemic to photography- such beautiful photographs from such stark surroundings.

[Peter Wright]

The people in east Ukraine who are so desperate to join Russia, might want to take a look at these. I know it's a very different place geographically, but this does point to how the central government addresses regional needs.

[Yger]

Re: Peter Write (The people in east Ukraine who are so desperate to join Russia, might want to take a look at these.)

Norilsk was built by the central government. It's the biggest producer of Nickel, which is exported to many countries, including the USA.

Some folks give advice to other countries while having no clue what they are talking about. (Most Russians and Ukrainians know Norilsk quite well. It's where a lot of them travel to work. Good wages make it easy to recruit.)

[Yger]

Norilsk is an example of privatization. All its infrastructure is inherited from the former Soviet Union, when it was flourishing. The current owners which include western investors are only interested in profits. Unless the government steps in, they won't spend any money on housing, transportation, clean air, etc.

[JohnMather]

Really interesting location and very strong images. Really strong.

[Johannes Leitner]

There are some webcams of Norilsk at http://www.norcom.ru/webcams

[Ed]

Wow, thanks for Lens Culture. Check out Tatsuo Suzuki's Tokyo Street People set, some stark imagery of Tokyo's underbelly.

[sneye]

It is quite rare to encounter such a well-rounded and thoroughly edited piece of work these days. Easily Magnum caliber.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Excellent choice to highlight, Mike.

I invite folks to take particular note of how Elena skillfully uses her color images' resources, especially shade tones and highlight levels, to reinforce the impression she wants the images to make. Her series is a strong example of the tremendous narrative power of color when used strategically and, most importantly, judiciously.

[Sven W]

@Kenneth: " especially shade tones and highlight levels"

Interesting comment ... can you pls expand on these concepts?

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@ Sven W: Color photography offers a tremendously rich visual vocabulary. Message in color images can be conveyed not just by a frame's contents and arrangement but also by the image's palette and the relationships of hues. Consider, for example, what the cool hues of many of Elena's shade tones convey almost subliminally. Also how the slightly over-heated/under-detailed highlights help to convey a bone-chilling and spirit-chilling environment. Even the sick-bed portrait in frame 13 conveys this loudly and clearly.

Chroma and hue are color photography's analogs to written language's adjectives and adverbs. Just as reading a well-written story is a treat to the mind, looking at well-constructed color photographs that skillfully employ all the tools of the medium is a delight to the eye even if the viewer can't identify all of the language elements. Elena's essay was a delight to view because it uses much of color photography's full vocabulary, not just the usual "awesome" and "great" that we normally see online, to get viewers' emotional and memetic involvement.

BTW, studying good color photography is yet another excellent reason to see such works printed and hung on a wall. Books can be a reasonable stand-in for the experience, given graphic arts' tremendous strides in recent years. But the exhibition print is where a color photograph's fullest expression is presented.