a hand sitting still on a handrail and the bodies blurring past together

March 23, 2023 8:26 AM

Alexey Titarenko is a Russian photographer with a particular focus on long exposure and city photography, a combination that leads to stunning civic ghostliness as in, among other collections, City of Shadows (1991-1994), or the somewhat more restrained New York (2004-present). See also his photocollage of perestroika-era signs and symbols, Nomenclature of Signs.

Really very quite previously. Fairly confident there hasn't been a year of these last fifteen in which I didn't think at least a couple times of these photos, it's about time other folks get a new look or another look at them.

posted by cortex (7 comments total)

I have always loved the City of Shadows works. Happy to see them all at once here, thanks. (the New York ones do not work for me at all, sadly.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:47 AM on March 23, 2023

I'd love to know the circumstances behind this photo's "whirlwind".
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:03 AM on March 23, 2023

Oh, I didn't recognize the name but now I remember seeing the City of Shadows set in one of my photography classes.
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on March 23, 2023

The City of Shadows photos evoked for me very strongly that part of "The Waste Land"

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street

I guess societal collapse has a similar appearance no matter where you are. (Also this post pairs so appropriately with the Post-Socialist Mortality Crisis post from yesterday!)
posted by the wine-dark sea at 10:13 AM on March 23, 2023

I'm pretty sure I've bought a few of these albums, up late at night and cruising around Cold Spring's back catalog
posted by Maaik at 10:21 AM on March 23, 2023

I'd love to know the circumstances behind this photo's "whirlwind".

Just looks like someone walking past to me. I can sort of make out a shoulder, scarf, and head/hat in the blur. Looks like they're in a market or transportation waiting room, especially with the person on the left sitting with a box on a luggage cart. The poster on the right looks to be an advertisement for events including a concert possibly an artclub called Europa and the sign on the left tells the hours for a shop, but I'm having a hard time thinking of Russian words with "шечн" in the middle besides the word for "muscular" (meaning "of muscles" rather than "lots of muscles") so I don't know what kind of shop that would be. Tough to make out the words on any of the signs.
posted by msbrauer at 1:50 PM on March 23, 2023

I don’t know how I missed this. Thanks for making an update. His work is just wonderful.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:00 PM on March 23, 2023