Evgeniy Pavlov, The Archive Series, 1985, 1988

Amateur photographers in the Soviet Union, who could sometimes ignore official commissions and party orders, would often manifest their subjectivity as certain types of the Soviet Man. In a sense, the story of the subjectivity of Kharkiv photography is the story of constructing their own image and those of their contemporaries, the story about their conscious participation in creating individual life stories.

Juri Rupin, November 7, 1985

Official Soviet photography had clear rules about expression, the subject matter to be presented, and the quality of photography, but the Soviet Ukrainian republic also had a notably high level of censorship.

Evgeniy Pavlov, Overlays, 1974

Amateurs, who were not supposed to make a living out of photography, functioned in a different zone — the world of Soviet cities, ordinary people's everyday lives, and aesthetic experimentation. All that for which no one in the USSR would expect to pay, a kind of visual ‘refuse’.

Igor Manko, Town Motifs with Clouds, 1986

This focus on club photography tended to lead to debate about photography as an art form, rather than to the discourse on street or documentary photography.

Alexandr Suprun, Swing, 1976

Hence the widespread use by Soviet amateur photographers of superimposed photographs or overlays of slides, montage and collage, experiments with color and chemical processes including posterization or toning. Techniques such as these were intended to reveal the author’s subjective gaze.

Roman Pyatkovka, The Games of Libido, 1995

Amateur photography was not bound by socialist realist aesthetics. Photographers that strived to create art photography could disregard official judgments on photographic quality. They frequently created works that appeared to ignore the very notion of quality.

Evgeniy Pavlov, The Violin, 1972

The subjectivity of photography lies in its individual or artistic nature, which is the antithesis of the documentary form; 'subjective expression' implies a world of dreams and fantasy which lies outside the objective vision of documentary photography.

Evgeniy Pavlov, The Violin, 1972

The photographic ‘blow’ in Kharkiv photography was widely understood in terms of its immediate effect intended to resemble an impact, surprising the viewer and enhancing the effect of the picture.

Roman Pyatkovka, The Maternity Ward, 1989

Their discussions on visual art produced new techniques and aesthetic approaches, including the idea that photography should disturb, shock, or ‘strike’ the viewer; a photograph could not function in the same way as a painting. Even though in both cases the picture is two-dimensional, the impact is necessarily different.

Juri Rupin, Armageddon, 1984

In the broadest sense, montage or collage both assume that the world has been cut into visual fragments and rearranged in a new order. Not only is this ‘remake’ visible to the viewer or the listener, but it becomes a constituent feature of the artwork.

Oleg Malevany, Which Way?, 1978

Mimesis, as a representation of reality, involves the dissection of any ‘frozen’ visual unity into fragments, and montage is a compositional method of re-structuring this fragmentation. Montage may be described as a new form of mimesis, a re-creation of the idea of imitative representation. It reveals the ‘true’ (i.e., hidden) meaning of things, rather than their external features.

Oleg Malevany, Stairs, 1973

By superimposing two different images photographers created a multifaceted work, expanding the boundaries of photography and transforming the photographic image into an art object. Collaging revealed an urge to transform the mimetic essence of photography and overcome its technical aesthetic limitations.

Oleg Malevany, Love in 2000, 1978

Image montage oftentimes ends up appearing logically paradoxical and aesthetically grotesque. It may merge external impressions with images linked to emotional or psychological experience, and the inner life.

Juri Rupin, Awful Portrait of the Wife, 1970s

Within the framework of conventional mimesis, descriptions of the outer and inner worlds are organized very differently. Historically, as the art develops, this dichotomy appears less stark, but the depiction of inner experience in terms of images from the outer world is particularly characteristic of the modernist period. It is also an aesthetic technique that is featured repeatedly in Kharkiv photography.

Sergey Solonsky, The Bestiary, 1991—1998

Montaging and collaging, which distinguish Kharkiv photography, not only interpreted the Soviet subject from angles disregarded by official photography but also allowed photographers to discover their own subjectivity.

Sergey Solonsky, The Bestiary, 1991—1998

As human beings, we are subject to the gaze of governments, cultures, and other people — creatures to be observed in the theatre of the world around us!

Evgeniy Pavlov, The Archive Series, 1985, 1988

Soviet subjectivity was not 'historical objectivity' but rather a kind of prosthesis, an artificial limb that helped people cope with reality.

Sergey Solonsky, The Bestiary, 1991—1998

In photography, the person portrayed will perceive herself in two opposing fields: I am the one who is me, and I am the one who acts as someone else. The separation between the mirror image and the internal consciousness of self is never clear-cut, and any adult is subject to the power of the imago or imagined perception of who she is.

Juri Rupin, November 7, 1985

A photograph allows identification with the ideal-I or imago occurring through a thought pattern that could be summarized as follows: I know that what I see is myself, and I also know that it cannot be me because I am looking at a photograph.

Juri Rupin, November 7, 1985

The dichotomy between the inner self and the external, photographed image is experienced as a basic psychological tension. By establishing visual models to guide behavior, the Soviet regime constructed its own citizens while offering them the illusion of an ideal, utopian future.

Boris Mikhailov, Overlays, 1968—1981

A dream is something shown, it is not the same as the gaze. In a dream state, something leads us on; we don’t even realize we’re dreaming. A dream is not a representation, it is linked to the unconscious. As in a mirror, when I am photographed (or photo-graphed), the subject is constructed when he or she becomes visible.

Oleg Malevany, Fire, 1977

By creating an alternative dream or mirage through photography and montage, Kharkiv photographers discovered a capacity to reset reality where the subject could reconstruct herself through a dream image.

Alexandr Suprun, Autumn Gifts, 1988

For photographers, the sense that they were seeing themselves in their Soviet subjects evoked both pleasure and uncertainty. Their identification with ordinary Soviet people was an open wound as much as a protective screen.

Alexandr Suprun, Rush Hour, 1977

Both photographer or viewer adopted an image that permitted a split between the self and the other projected self — ‘to see myself seeing myself.' These photographic flights of fancy, realized through technical and visual experiment, made it possible to rethink the Soviet subject. Above all, however, they allowed photographers the opportunity to re-examine themselves as people who, while being cultural ‘outsiders’, nevertheless remained inextricably bound to the Soviet world.