“Best Side” Ritual
Exhibition curator: Anna Bundeleva
Project curator: Lesia Pcholka
︎ Month of Photography in Minsk
Duration of the exhibition: 06.09 – 06.10.2017
Gallery Canteen XYZ (Minsk, Belarus)
Family archive photos are extremely important and preserve lots of myster-ies. They allow us to study the non-verbal aspects of life and self-understanding. They can become the key to the previously unknown, to feel-ings and memories that you can’t examine via other sources.
Photographs like this unite the verbal, visual and emotional perception. Peo-ple turn to photography to look at their lives from a different perspective, set priorities, separate what’s important from things that are not. Photo collec-tions that appear in day-to-day life are the evidence of how people interpret and present their lives.
Looking at these collections allows us to get closer to understanding what people considered significant and valued the most in their lives. That, in turn, showed their beliefs.
Family photos are often called vernacular which means ordinary, local, day-to-day. This puts a picture alongside with the way of speaking of a specific group of people, type of their home and its decor. Vernacular photos aim to transfer a particular message, and they are the message.
Usually, we’re captivated by an event documented by a person with a camera. However, along with the captured event, there is also the act of photography, as well as the process of looking at the result. All of these parts are a social ritual related to expressing one's beliefs in the framework of a particular symbolic system.
Woven blankets, carpets, tablecloths were an important attribute of family, festive and day-to-day photography in Belarus after WWII. These elements of textile interior appear on photographs to show people’s lives to others from their very best side. They manifest the perception of beauty of a family or even society of the photographed people.
Thus, decor elements acquire another function on top of their primary use — they can now express the feeling of joy and festivity. They become the arti-facts of the home cult that the family reenacts to create the desired image for themselves later shown to others.
РЫТУАЛ “НАЙЛЕПШЫ БОК”
Куратарка выставы: Ганна Бундзелева
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Месяц фатаграфіі ў Мінску
Сямейныя фотаздымкі валодаюць асаблівай важнасцю і захоўваюць у сабе нямала таямніц. Яны дазваляюць вывучаць пераважна невербальным аспекты жыцця людзей і іх самаразуменне. Яны могуць стаць прыдатным ключом да раней недаступнай інфармацыі, да пачуццяў і ўспамінаў, якія немагчыма даследаваць праз іншыя крыніцы.