"Manifestations" of Alexander Yakimchuk

Solo exhibition of black and white photography by Alexander Yakimchuk       Since June 6 at the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art (#WEartMuseum)               Touching a black and white photograph happened to me when I was 10 years old. For my birthday, my parents gave me the simplest Soviet Smena-8m camera, and then film, development, enlarger, photo printing. My childhood and youth passed with a camera and black and white photography, this magic of the appearance of the image on photo paper remained with me. And already in adulthood, I returned to those sources that inspired me and it grew into something big, into a part of myself. Photography has become a part of my life.       The work of Jaromir Funke, a photographer of the Czech avant-garde of the 30s, was impressive and set the course for my work in many ways - I felt his desire to touch feelings, love and his belief that light brings love.       Photography revealed in me itself, a great strength and desire - to discover the wealth of our inner world.       This is exactly what I am trying to convey and strengthen in my students, in the courses “Composition and Image Content”, which I teach. Finding the basis in myself, my faith.       I could not imagine that my childhood hobby would grow into something more, that I would like to show my Odessa, the one I feel, the one I live, the one I love, where you often see smiles on the streets, hear jokes and greetings - "good of the day. " This is my city, the city that I love, the city that answered me with gratitude, he discovered in me - me.I suggest you touch and immerse yourself in its atmosphere. In the atmosphere of refraction of light, let it through you. Try to feel and find part of yourself in this. Each work is a reflection, an attempt to realize oneself in a stream of light filling the space of this city.       The “Manifestations” exhibition begins with the manifestation of film, photo paper, the “manifestation” of oneself, the city, one’s beauty, one’s fears, this is my search for peace. The exhibition presents works for 10 years, from 2010 to 2020. All photographs were shot on a black-and-white film, developed by myself and then printed by me on gelatin-silver photo paper. Welcome to my Manifestation world!                            He became interested in photography in 1984.       2006-2020 study of the history of photography, the study of the basics of geometric composition, the creation of the author's course "Composition and content of photography"       2014 first solo exhibition in Krivoy Rog, Ukraine “City by the Sea”       2014 second personal exhibition in Odessa, Ukraine “City by the Sea”       2015 third personal exhibition in Odessa, Ukraine “Beloved city. My conversation       2016 cameraman of the documentary "Budinok Slovo". In 2018, the film received the Ukrainian film award “Dzig Gold” in the category of the best documentary.       2017 fourth personal exhibition in Istanbul Turkey “I BELIVE - I LIVE”       2018 the fifth personal exhibition in the framework of the world forum “London Street Photography Festival” in London2015 -2018 lecturer of the author's course in the "Creative space" Refraction "" Composition and content of photography "Odessa       2018-2020 I read the author’s course "Composition and content of photography."              〽️ light is the magic light of Yakimchuk, always accurately guessing not only the direction and concentration of light fluxes, in which the picture captured by the camera will inevitably shock the audience with its organic matter, will cause a strong, sympathetic, and even an enthusiastic response in their souls, but - believe it or not no - even the subsequent evolution of the divine glow, a mysterious property, but characteristic of the artist’s best works.How could I explain this ... Briefly, it’s unlikely to succeed, but I will try. Maybe so ... It is the rarest combination in each of the easel photographs of Yakimchuk that is unfinished, captured in the development of the plot, which began somewhere outside the visible and ends unknown, and the continuous variability of light causes a feeling of internal movement, understatement, and not only in essence , meaningful sense, but even in the compositional system of works. Whoever falls into the sphere of attention of a photo artist is a woman half-turned to us with a cardboard cup in her hand; "Madame Storozhenko", with a radiant smile hanging over a slippery fish counter; a street musician staring frantically to the side, over his head, above his accordion; a yard grandmaster hunched over a chessboard; a girl, waiting, shifting from foot to foot at the intersection; an old woman towering above her vegetable layout on the side of the road; sailors crowded near the poster booth (this unpretentious list is endless) - the next moment they will continue to be beyond the borders of the frame constructed by Yakimchuk. The reality is captured here in such a way that the time stopped by the photograph continues, contrary to formal logic, to flow, to last, so to speak, in the zone of significant absence.It would seem, in principle, impossible. After all, agreeing that the electron is a corpuscle and a wave at the same time, we, nevertheless, register in experience either one or the other. There is no other way. But in the case of Yakimchuk, our senses suddenly, overturning what is known to us almost from the school bench, expand our capabilities immensely. We are delighted to behold the Odessa types we know to the chill under the pit in the atmosphere, recognizable and sweet: each (or each) of these women and children, pensioners and students, fishermen and droppers, unknown passers-by and sweet neighbors, appears before us in all in its beauty, gives itself the power to take a good look. But this is not the end of the matter. They were shot in such a way that in our imagination, significant fragments of their daily existence, not shown in the photographs at all, already melted where we were not, and have not yet taken place where we probably will not be, unfold in our imagination, relief and tangibly .       Valery Nikolaevich Baranovsky 12/31/2014. (about photographs of Alexander Yakimchuk at the exhibition “City by the Sea”, Odessa, House with an Angel, December 2014)                      From June 6 at the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art              Daily (except Wednesday)       ⏳ 11:00 - 17:00 (weekdays)       ⏳ 11:00 - 18:00 (weekends)              Pushkinskaya, 9