The still lifes by Vadim Gushchin impress as being somewhat old-fashioned. Compared with contemporary "still- or food-photography" - with modern still lifes, they are simple, naive, without craft. Through the intermediary of the contemporary medium Gushchin strives to take contact with the long-standing tradition of still-life painting and bring out the most diverse aspects of symbolic portraiture. In other words: with the aid of photograp¬hy he intends to symbolize objects arranged in front of his came¬ra. "Reality" is to alter its meaning through two concepts, viz. through that of staging still life and through that of photography.

At first glance, Gushchin seems to follow here a special Central-European concept of portraying, (I do not intend to reflect any further on the measure in which this concept still occurs in contemporary "stillphotography"). However, something oscillates in Gushchin`s attitude towards things that can be explained not only in terms of historical interest in symbolic forms, but by something that also encompasses within it a specific Russian aspect of portraying which can carry the aesthetic value of the image - as it is apparent to us - exclusively in a staged ambiguity of meaning.

The West-European view on the photography of the artistic Russian scene somewhat hopelessly gropes over the country, for Russian photographic works do not have much in common with our notions on art. Although there is question of photography, in every case we hurt against an absence of pictures, something practically incomprehensible to us. And just on the basis of this at¬titude, the sense of photography should not be perceived through our understanding. Even in the early nineties photographs in pub¬lic were a rarity and illuminated advertising itself, as an expression of big-city goods exchange, appeared in but a modest measure. Photography in Russia enjoys a long-standing tradition and in pho¬tographic circles forms the subject of lively and heated debates. This notwithstanding, production of photographs and the modes of their use are considerably limited. For instance, there is a lack of an excessive pressure through pictures, the way we must occasio¬nally bear it. Why do so many people in Russia refuse pictures? Perhaps we might find the answer in the Christian-Orthodox, or Jewish tradition. The former has managed for centuries with just one given canon of images, while the latter has more or less abandoned images and puts more trust in language.

It would seem that possible criteria for dealing with photogra¬phic pictures are today determined by two contexts. It is, on the one hand, a tradition of images which, although not advertised, is yet palpable, permitting but a limited world of photography to de¬velop in it, and on the other, the specific peculiarities of photo¬graphy, a characteristic of which is not simple imitation, but atso the specific chemical processes that play a role here. Thus, artistic photography is practically always utilized for a syn¬thesis of two, in reality contradictory concepts. By direct interven¬tion into reality, photography permits to create pictures that for the most part we perceive as imitations. A subsequent adjustment of the photographs turns imitations of reality back to the traditional concept of the image.

The artistic context of contemporary photography has been af¬fected by a return to "artistic photography" or 19th century picto-rialism and the Russian avant-garde of the twenties of the 20th century. These aspects appeared towards the end of the seventies and early eighties through conceptualism in art which, similarly as the Western Concept-Art, was to have altered the attitude towards art and, in this case, to photography. As to Russian photography, it is of importance to underline the difference in its relationship to the Western Concept-Art: while discussions in the Western hemisphe¬re bore on problems of perception, authenticity, social modes of utilization and their gravity, the Russians worked with photography in an explicitly artistic sense of the term. Exploiting the possibilities of manipulation inherent in the medium, they researched the ex¬pressive forms with an inclination towards the magical and an anonymous authorship.

Following the harsh experience with the use of photography in the totalitarian system, public means of its utilization remained ex¬cluded for a very long time, Instead, consideration was given to the technological and historical conditions of photography.

If the criteria for pictures are to be sought for in a conceptual mastering of a particular picture, then there exist no style trends (whose criteria could be introduced from outside. Every individual picture is as if independent of the rest, is absolute in its materiality and its own specific aureola. We should keep this extreme situa¬tion in mind if we are to free ourselves from our own western prejudices. In photography, they work for the most part isolated from [he others, although groups existed and still exist where photography is discussed, resulting in not exactly a uniform style, but father in encouraging them to go their own particular way. Hence, the great diversity in their works, not giving much sense to compa¬risons. Despite that, similarities do exist on various levels.

If we wish to characterize the photographic scene, we have to take into consideration claims to artistic photography. But this al¬ready gives rise to a dilemma for contemporary photography in the West has a different context and background than Eastern artistic photography. The manner the Russians deal with photography may be compared to "artphotography" or 19th century pictorialism. However, "Artphotography`1 or pictorialism has never been com¬pletely accepted in the West. Quite the contrary, it was always perceived as an unnecessary rapprochement with painting and graphics so that young contemporary "artphotographers" felt pro¬voked by the aesthetization and went back to pure and direct pho¬tography. Pictorial photography never went completely out of use in Russia, despite a novel view or novel matter-of-factness of avant-garde of the twenties and thus it found it handy to make use of aesthetic models of "artistic photography, in order to be able more naturally to accept pictorial manipulations of present-day photo¬graphy in Russia, for the mode of dealing with photography involv¬es a strikingly conservative aspect, or a conventional attitude. This is perhaps how, from the conceptual point of view, we may appre¬hend the ambiguity that derives therefrom. Conventional modes of seeing and the manipulating interventions result in a failure to meet the expectations in relation to what is contemporary and to¬pical, to that which in the West appears as the contents of what photography is. In other words: to us, the presence of reality be¬comes condensed on the photograph`s surface.The Russians, on the other hand, are more often interested in "the lower" layer of his¬tory or reminiscences. The metaphoric depth layer is philosophical¬ly perceived as a metaphysical one. It adjusts photographs as if they were old pictures whose presence is to a large extent the past. In our fondness of speed of photographing, the evanescence of the instant or merely the perceivable surface, we are only rarely aware that every picture instantaneously and inevitably becomes the past. The Russians, on the contrary, have staked on the forms of tirnelessness that can be practically inimitably portrayed by what has passed away. Their artistic photograph intends to overcome evane¬scence, i.e. the present. From our point of view this is supported by Vadim Gushchin`s still-lifes. These - like numerous still-lifes of the painting tradition - are staged. (And like "nature morte", have not still-lifes, since time out of mind, had something of "timelessness"?) Gushchin, through the medium of photography or with-in it, endea¬vours to justify ``the essence of things", yet despite the photogra¬pher`s ironic view of his own attitude, this breakthrough comprises a paradox. Photography creates a distance from things that are meant to help "to reveal1` their essence. But the fact that things in front of a camera and in the picture live "a quiet" life - as a matter of fact they are dead - their essence disappears, escapes the photo¬graphic intervention through the silenced being in the photograph.

Dmitry Vilensky and Igor Lebedev work in a similar manner. Vilensky reprocesses photographs of street scenes from Petrograd in his darkroom. By rough smearing and toning he "estranges" them until the present, or the identifiable "contemporaneity" be¬comes smudgy, unclear, The scene cannot be interpreted as a to¬pical event, It acts as a recollection of the past, because it impres¬ses indifferently as regards time and place of the event.

Lebedev enlarges old photographs taken by his father and paints the copies using chemical processes. Beside colours, the negatives also show evident mechanical damage. All this transfers attention from the people, items and places that originally figured there as the objects of this photograph. We evidently note that these pictures come from other times and imagine that the per¬sons we see in old pictures have grown old or even died. Yet, could not these manipulated pictures precisely express that certain time-lessness of the past or eternity, a symbol or presentation of death? Why does Gushchin set such a great store by his still lifes of fruit? Why does he range it on shelves as a special form of introduction?

Gushchin probably stands far from the necrorealism of Petrograd artists around Yufit, yet his photograph presents the world as dead material and on that basis we can grasp the impor¬tant component of the spiritual or metaphysical photograph which we can compare with the magically real or the metaphysical one, in terms of the pictorial worlds of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico.

Archival filing, museum conservation and display are schemes from the old world of still lifes. These schemes and all the allegoric and symbolic concepts comprised in them create the fiction of a well-organized world. Yet, precisely this arrangement presented in the concept of still life lags behind in everyone of Gushchin`s pho¬tographs, because there is danger that the singular event in the photograph would escape the generalizing symbolism. If Gushchin tersely remarks that he is using "the simplest techniques of por¬traying, particularly daylight as it streams in through the window", then those are processes of symbolizing, handed down by long tra¬ditions of still life which fulfill the pictorial concept, as well as that of photography.

Western attempts at interpreting Russian art can be verified in the constructivism of the twenties, A more thorough comparison with the Western standard of Dutch or Hungarian constructivism will reveal differences. Alexandr Rodchenko skipped the long tradition of Western art from the renaissance and took contact with icons which were uninterruptedly handed down without change to the 19th century, because they adhered to a system that in principle was unchangeable. Malevich created supramatism in order to rid art of everything practical, i.e. changing relations and justified the neu¬trality and autonomy of groundlessness. Such a variable in relations - although indescribable in any detail - also has to be presumed present in numerous works of contemporary photographers, Me¬mory, recollection, history, the past, death or a moment tending to¬wards "eternal" life are not presented through an event, but through transcendency or transformation into what we term recollection, his¬tory, etc. The presence of a photographic event, through manipula¬tion of the photograph - in contrast to "immediate, direct art" - relies on the possibility of its being manipulated in the picture, and this not solely through the intermediary of black-and-white photography, but likewise through repainting, chemical treatment or the aging process, photographs "adjusted" by time. This involves originality and primarily authenticity of the picture and not of the event, per¬son, things or places. Precisely negative experiences with photo¬graphy from the times of Soviet power when this art was exploited for agitation, propaganda, but also manipulation of history, the sen¬se of photography for portraying became sharpened. Ultimately, the guarantee of authenticity resides in this portrayal or in this possibility of manipulation. Gushchin`s works bear testimony to this. When using the scheme or the concept of "still life", he exploits it as a pos¬sibility to feign various means of usage. They might be works for museums and archives, display samples for biologists, gardeners or show-windows in a grocery, but also works of art. However, none of these modes of use is functional. He relies on a possible realiza¬tion of this concept - and each one of his photographs is such a realization - but this certainty does not reside in the ethical sphere, in what we perceive, but rather in symbolic forms historically "origi¬nating" in trustworthiness and in their similarity. The paradoxical si¬tuation persists: that which is real in the photographed picture, competes with the things portrayed and the symbolic organization.

Gushchin shifts the iconic format before the subject so as to create the impression as if the negative had moved during the en¬larging process, for we see two cut-outs of images separated by a dark strip, a dividing line between the pictures on the negative.

Language or words form part of Gushchin`s photographs. Occasionally it is but his name as signature, as if anxious to con¬vince himself of the picture`s origin and document for others the originality and authenticity of the "work of art". The stick-on label fixed on the object shown in the picture looks as an ordinary rela¬tionship, If we apprehend the name as an abstract idea, a concept, then the subject passes into the picture with an allegorical potency, just the way objects functioned as symbols during entire centuries.

True, an excursion into Russian iconic tradition does not di¬rectly shift us further, it nonetheless, offers us a comparison that will put us in contact with a world that resembles certain pictorial concepts of the twenties - constructivism - specified as Russian constructivism which, through Malevich and Rodchenko, was rela¬ted to Russian Orthodox art. The magic of light in the icon, diffu¬sed through a golden underlay, could help in bringing Russian photography and iconography closer together. Therein also resi¬des the difference between Eastern and Western photography: If with the help of light Western photography makes something vi¬sible, Eastern photography strives through light to make something disappear. Magic realism: this German concept means something expressing a real aspect of our world through a sharpening of the real. In any case, so that this process, despite its stopping as if in some flowing state, again became an event right before our eyes. As nothing really takes place, the event seems to stop the instant we look at it. Similarly also with Russian photography: as if the es¬sence of photography were a freezing of life in the photographic act. This phenomenon in Gushchin`s photographs is reinforced by their old-fashioned character and ultimately the traditional forms. It is comparable to the subsequent adjustment of pictures with chemicals in the darkroom. This, too, is the aim of adjustment of "reality" in pictures and of the pictures themselves in order to trans¬form reality and the picture, i.e. that it be spiritualized.

A photograph becomes worn by too frequent touches, movings, repeated handlings, transfers and the same also applies to subsequent work on the photograph. Chemistry, as well as the aging processes change equally as do traditional concepts. And here the circle of our reflection comes to a close; Traces of "wear and tear" lure towards an assimilation of West-influenced aesthetic models, but only rarely do they affect the "whole" picture, some¬thing remains in it lying athwart in space.