Creation is always a sealed book to us which the artist sometimes can’t unseal even himself. In order to solve this riddle sometimes you need the whole life and the people whom you suggest your mystery, your sealed book, your unsaid secret.
You have no need to know the artist personally. It is enough to look at his works and it seems that you already know him. But you always get an unsolved problem – how to connect objective analysis of creation with subjectivity of your attitude. Then it’s better to tell you about him on behalf of me.
I’m lucky. I’ve known Pavlodar photo artist and pedagogue Alexander Parkhomenko for thirty years but when I see his works I’m always amazed at striking novelty of each still. Though this impression doesn’t depend on the age of the work. It comes every time you meet the real work of art.
At first he showed his works at the exhibition “Orion – 75” in his native Pavlodar. It was a serious creative claim, because the photo club “Orion” connected venerable and experienced masters. They noticed a young photographer and rewarded him with the diploma of III degree.
From this very time the wide geography of his work began to create. It is impossible even to name the numerous competitions, photo salons exhibitions, biennale in Moscow, Almaty and cities of the former USSR, Spain, France, Czechoslovakia, Singapore, Rumania, FRG and Hungary. Every year brought him new prizes and triumphal places. It was a bright flight of the photo expert and an epoch of creative discoveries, which deserve a separate story.
But I want to recollect Alexander’s awesome attitude to his own work which still is striking you. There is a popular expression “Creation is only 1 per cent of inspiration and 90 per cent of job”.
Alexander could splash the water on the canvas for hours and look at these drops, he could move the lamps around the usual chemical retorts, and he could look for a necessary point of survey for a long time and very patiently. It was clear that his prizes and international recognition is the result of such work. But his work was enthusiastic.
In those times all the photographers had very simple cameras and rather poor set of materials. Colourful photos were said to be elite and inaccessible. However I always liked black and white photography. Just that very work connected concepts “photo” and “painting” in my consciousness.
The first works I saw confirmed that it’s not enough to push the button of a camera; you should be able to look through the view-finder. Alexander could do it even then.
If you look through the first published catalogue of his exhibition 1986 it will be clear that the artist’s hand hasn’t grown old. His whole artistic perception wasn’t ruined when he didn’t take part in the competitions. For more than 10 years Alexander has been creating a professional studio. Now it works successfully and he returned to his active creative work. His personal exhibition “Priyrtyshye my ravishing” impressed a lot of people not only in Pavlodar, but in Almaty and Astana. The works won’t come back soon. They’ll travel to many cities of Europe and Asia.
Alexander Parkhomenko’s author exhibition “Bayan-Aul is the country of legends…”suddenly connected the creative works of two photo experts. It was opened in the memorial house-museum of the first Pavlodar professional photographer – student of local lore D.P. Bagaev. It showed us that creative traditions don’t die.
In Pavlodar State University by S. Toraigyrov he teaches students the base of photo skills. He says the interest to the photo is reviving nowadays. It means the people who can continue these traditions will appear. Though such people appeared long ago.
Being a student of pedagogical Institute he decided to organize a children’s photo studio. It was opened in Pavlodar Regional Palace of pioneers in 1980. Pupils’ works of studio “Photon” made a big collection and Alexander could easily call himself “the expert” because only the expert has deserving pupils.
He didn’t spare time and organized many personal exhibitions of his pupils. Andrew Falin, Alexander Alov, Vyacheslav Naidyukov, Dmitry Okatenko among them. And they constantly brought prizes and diplomas of the prestige competitions for children. Following the teacher young photographers became known abroad too, but they especially remembered the competitions in Krasnogorsk. Famous cameras “Zenith” were produced there and one day a photo gun – “Grand prix” of the prestige competition appeared in the studio.
Many years passed, the pupils went their own way but, of course, they remember where they did their first professional step. And besides they should remember that Alexander Vasilyevich taught them not only to take pictures but also to create. Because he is a Creator.
Photographer Alexander Parkhomenko makes his works in such a way that you want not only to look at them but to look closely, to think and to compare his thoughts with your own.
There is no need to argue about the meaning of such conceptions as beauty, spirit, time, memory… But there is also a world around us and we always think about it. Someone invented a wheel; someone cut a deer on a rock. The method of creation hasn’t changed since that first stroke, only the instrument has.
When photography announced itself as an artist technique, many its opponents also appeared.
If you compare picturesque paintings which require many years and artist’s soul and photo art, the last seems to be very easy. But time proved another. Photography became not the last way of artistic mastering of reality.
Definitely, the artist’s experience doesn’t consist of scrupulous copying of the reality, but of its unique comprehension. That is why, Alexander’s works become pictures, which are made in other way than paintings. Sometimes it’s difficult to realize that they are not as simple as it seems to you.
Formerly Alexander spared many years to master the technology of photo art, which let him to give the meaning to his portrayal. It gave him a very wide scope for expression. Progress gave him new instruments and he skillfully uses them. What gloomy sky! What a black lake! It can’t be! But look and you’ll remember your thoughts, success and disappointment. You’ll remember it without fail, even if you haven’t been on the shore of this lake before.
A lonely tree against the background of raged colourful sky, a sad view on the scenery, the shining sun over the water, the ancient silent rocks are the world which the artist didn’t only see, but also understood. His only passion is to give his own attitude, his understanding of what the ancient called the enlightenment.
This real naturalistic sensation of the man, his unity with the world is as a password to the entrance to his creation.
The variety of his methods impresses you. Here you see a document, here – a call-over with classical painting, there – unbelievable view from the modern media-culture. They are all connected into one panorama, where you can’t only admire the beauty, but you are invited to understand and realize the world of a person.
Let me invite you to Alexander Parkhomenko’s creative world and stand for a while on its threshold.
Alexander’s works in “nu” style is not admiring of female body and the search of unexpected foreshortening. He includes the woman into natural paradigm. The beauty against the invented background looks not very natural; she goes away from the front part. In studio “nu” the background is absent, but in the life one it is a part of multiciphered aspect.
The artist has found a way how to make a lively and changeable female body fixed but alive. A woman moves in a strange way because she is included in a constant world’s rotation. Body’s lines become like a tuning fork and unusual subjects seem to be wonderful.
We’ll argue for a long time about this style, but everybody understands that a woman’s body is always a mystery for us and there are always people who try to solve it. But they make new questions again and try to answer them. Alexander Parkhomenko is among such people.
The portrait row impresses you not only by colourful types but by their unexpected reading. The old man whose hands look like a tree is not only a new method. It’s the realization of human’s life which has its own place between blossom and loosing its bloom.
When you look at the portraits made by Alexander in different years it seems to you that you know these people very well. Once a scientist-anthropologist decided to make a general portrait of the Human by connecting many photos. Though he got a right portrait but it looks like a flat mask. On the contrary Alexander makes the whole row of unique faces which have their own thoughts, emotions, conditions.
His portrait isn’t a mask; it’s a moment of life, a sign of inner freedom or person’s confusion. Each of them has its deep sense. Sometimes it means the whole life. Bitterness and joy, future and past – everything is mixed in the portraits of well-known people and those ones whom the artist snatched out of the real life.
Still life lyricism (I call it so) is not momentary. A subject in his creation work isn’t a symbol of any views or opinions; it became an object of inner emotions. It let you call this style as lyricism. Form, light and shadow make you think. But only the artist and his audience know these thoughts.
I won’t be able to analyze his still lives. There are too many meanings in them. There is something personal in each of them.
It is pointless to ask what this or that thing means. But it is useful to look hard at them and try to see much more than a simple subject. And then, no doubt, you’ll hear something only you and the artist can understand.
Landscape is a special side of Alexander’s creation. In the course of time he refused to photograph typical town sights which were skillful and wonderful. Today his landscape is a real nature. It was found in Bayan-Aul Mountains. It’s difficult to explain that you look at familiar places and don’t recognize them. It seems that you see them at the first time. It is not only because of the new methods. He finds only one point of survey among thousands ones and you have a wonder.
His landscapes always struck you by its completeness and colour. There is nothing chance; each detail has its own place. The beauty of the world amazes you, but the photo makes you realize this beauty.
You can’t paint the world by two colours. It is very colourful and changeable. We can call Alexander Parkhomenko’s creation genre polyphony. But he doesn’t use many representational methods. Stinginess use of foreshortening, light and composition makes many meanings of the work. The vagueness is like our life, which is also dissimilar. When you ask questions, when you are surprised then the work is well done.
But Alexander also has naivety of a real artist. They always believe that everybody must understand him. This great error let them create their works with inspiration. They always believed in their destination. Alexander seems to believe.
Someone can reproach him with the wide number of his styles, someone praises him. But his creation is academic, because he doesn’t risk without sense and he always has finds. Sometimes when you look at his works you think about Degas, Renoirs and Mane. It proves that Alexander Parkhomenko makes his creation on the base of world art.
Between past and future, dab and display we get new understanding of the world, which is also called the Art.
There are more questions than answers in Alexander’s works. He easily speaks to his audience and suggests them a theme for a reflection. Sometimes his works have no names. The artist prompts the onlooker to the talk, to the first question and answer.
The dialogue begins practically at once but it is very special. The author speaks to everybody saying nothing. His work speaks instead of him. Once Leo Tolstoy was asked about the purpose of his novel “Anna Karenina”. He advised to read it.
Once a man was standing at one of Alexander’s works and couldn’t go away. I asked: “What do you think about this work?” He replied: “I simply watch”
I suggest you simply to watch. Everything you think will stay in your soul. But it’ll appear only in the dialogue with the artist. Contact with people is the talent of Alexander’s soul.
It is also the infinity of his creation. |