Mikhail Lemkhin's "MISSING FRAMES"
Andrey Borisovich Ustinov
austinov at leland.stanford.edu
Thu Apr 13 20:23:29 UTC 1995
It is my great pleasure to present here a press release of Mikhail
Lemkhin's album of photo portraits "MISSING FRAMES." I believe there is no
need to explain to those who studies or belongs to Russian culture who
Mikhail Lemkhin is. His portraits were presented at several photo
exhibitions and were published in many newspapers, magazines and books,
including the academic ones. The latest to date portrait by Lemkhin I
believe was reproduced in "Temy i variatsii / Themes and Variations" (vol.
8 of "Stanford Slavic Studies" series.)
Being a great partisan of Mikhail Lemkhin's art I feel it is necessary to
emphasize that his portraits played an extremely important role in
establishing contemporary Russian culture in the West. They created a
visual embodiment not only for the names of those photographed by Lemkhin,
but rather allowed viewers to establish a certain correspondence between
the creators and their ouevre. In this respect Mikhail Lemkhin's pictures
are indeed "psychological portraits". This collection circumscribed by the
portraits of two outstanding representatives of Russian intelligentsia --
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov and Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev, -- is a
formidable collection of people, who, as Olga Andreyev Carlisle writes in
her introduction, "are united by the courage to confront themselves and
their time -- Anna Akhmatova's 'true twentieth century'."
Andrey Ustinov
austinov at leland.stanford.edu
P.S. I am sorry I have to resend it to the list, but my original formatting
got scrambled and made some parts unreadable. It is fixed now. I apologize
for any inconvenience and this necessary repetition.
A.U.
___________________________________________________________________
MISSING FRAMES
Photo portraits of Russian, European and American cultural figures by
MIKHAIL LEMKHIN
Introduction by Olga Andreyev Carlisle
HERMITAGE PUBLISHERS, 72 pp., 61 duotone
To order send check or money order to:
Mikhail Lemkhin
1811 38 Ave.,
San Francisco, CA 94122
$24.00+2.50 for shipping and handling (CA residents add sales tax)
FROM THE REVIEWS:
"I don't know what Lemkhin does with his subjects to bring to the surface
that something which is hidden away, maybe even from themselves. But that
hidden thing is what concerns Lemkhin the most as an artist." -Nina
Katerli, author
"[Lemkhin] penetrates one's innermost feelings." -Yakov Sklianski, cameraman
"The photos of Mikhail Lemkhin are harsh, sometimes even cruel...they
create an impression of extreme tension." -La Pensee Russe (Russkaia Mysl')
"The photos are remarkably expressive. He is a true artist." -Boris
Khazanov, author
"The portrait of Joseph Brodsky is extraordinarily great. You have
discovered what Joseph hides himself - his kindness. That is art." -Mark
Popovsky, author
"This is an exhibition of noble faces. They all look very much... like
people. All of them are characterized by independent behavior, which itself
shapes the human features. Their look is one of a Homo independent."
-Samuel Lurie, author
"These portraits tell the life stories of my friends..." -Alexander
Kushner, poet
"Mikhail Lemkhin's exhibition is, for me, more than a show of images, but
rather a presence of people... One meets the characters, living and gone,
who are equally as real as the people walking around the exhibit hall. It
isn't nostalgia you feel, but the pleasure of meeting them..." -Yakov
Gordin, author
"This is a portrait of my whole generation." Boris Strugatsky, novelist
"Thank you so much! It would be useless and presumptuous on my part to
praise your portraits..." -Sergei Dovlatov, author
"Terrific portraits..." -Derek Walcott, poet, Nobel Prize Laureate
PORTRAITS
...One
shouldn't expect a film shot in the dark to
develop new
images. Of course not. Still, one can
reproach a film
shot in the daylight of one's life for
missing frames.
Joseph Brodsky "In a Room and a Half"*
1. Czeslaw Milosz
Poet, Nobel Prize Laureate
2. Andrei Sakharov
Physicist, human right advocate, Nobel Prize Laureate
3. Joseph Brodsky
Poet, Nobel Prize Laureate
4. Father Gleb Yakunin
Member of Russian Parliament, former political prisoner
5. Richard Wilbur
Poet, Pulitzer Prize Laureate
6. Vaclav Havel
Playwright, former political prisoner, President of Czech Republic
7. Werner Herzog
Film director
8. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Political scientist, diplomat
9. Israel (Cachao) Lopez
Composer, instrumentalist
10. Leonard Michaels
Author
11. Dusan Makavejev
Film director
12. Ida Nappelbaum
Poet, former political prisoner
13. Randy Newman
Composer, instrumentalist
14. Manoel de Oliveira
Film director
15. Joyce Carol Oates
Author
16. Sally Potter
Film director
17. Sebastiao Salgado
Photographer
18. Rick Wakeman
Composer, instrumentalist
19. Michelangelo Antonioni
Film director
20. Richard Avedon
Photographer
21. Margaret Atwood
Author
22. Alan Cranston
Senator
23. Andy Garcia
Actor
24. Allen Ginsberg
Poet
25. Eduardo Galeano
Author
26. Olga Andreyev-Carlisle
Artist, journalist, author
27. David Samoilov
Poet
28. Anatoly Sobchak
Mayor of St.Petersburg, Russia
29. Veniamin Kaverin
Author
30. Viktor Nekrasov
Journalist, author
31. Vladimir Maximov
Journalist, author
32. Vasily Aksionov
Author
33. Sergei Dovlatov
Journalist, author
34. Samuil Lurie
Literary critic, author
35. Boris Strugatsky
Author
36. Yury Nagibin
Author
37. Andrei Siniavsky
Literary scholar, author, former political prisoner
38. Andrei Tarkovsky
Film director
39. Alexander Askoldov
Film director
40. Alexander Sokurov
Film director
41. Alexander Kushner
Poet
42. Bella Akhmadulina
Poet
43. Vladimir Ufliand
Poet
44. Evgeny Rein
Poet
45. Anatoly Naiman
Poet
46. Vladimir Bukovsky
Human rights advocate, author, former political prisoner
Joan Baez
Composer, vocalist, human rights advocate
47. Alek Rapoport
Artist
48. Maia Turovskaia
Film historian
49. Dmitrii Likhachev
Literary scholar, former political prisoner
50. Mikhail Zhvanetsky
Author, stand up comedian
51. Otar Iosseliani
Film director
52. Alfred Eisenstaedt
Photographer
53. Yakov Gordin
Journalist, author
54. W.S. Merwin
Poet, Pulitzer Prize Laureate
55. Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photographer
56. Yury Alexandrov
Artist
57. Bulat Okudzhava
Poet, compozer, author
58. Michael Chemiakin
Artist
59. Philip Kaufman
Film director
60. Adam Hochschild
Journalist
61. Derek Walcott
Poet, playwright, Nobel Prize Laureate
__________________
* Quoted from: Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1986.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mikhail Lemkhin
1811 38 Ave., San Francisco, CA 94122; ph. (415) 664-7677
Mikhail Lemkhin, born in 1949 in Leningrad, USSR (now
St.Petersburg, Russia), emigrated to the United States in 1983, leaving
behind a twenty-year career in photography and journalism. Given his first
camera at the age of seven, Lemkhin thought of himself as a photographer
since he was eight. His first national recognition came in 1964, when his
photographs were published in "Sovetskoe Foto", followed the next year by
an article on him featuring his photographs.
Lemkhin attended Leningrad University, 1967-1973, and received M.A.
in journalism and photojournalism. While at the university, he worked as a
photographer for university departments and for the university newspaper.
After receiving his degree, Lemkhin worked as a free-lance and staff
journalist and photographer for various Leningrad newspapers and
publications. He also worked as an advertising photographer for the
Graphics Arts Agency (an agency of the Union of Soviet Artists), for which
he produced more than 20 books.
Lemkhin began making portraits of Russian cultural figures when he
was in his teens. Since coming to the United States, he has conceived this
as a book-length project, (tentatively called "Survival Of The Soul: The
Faces From Russian Cultural Life"), featuring portraits of about 150
persons: poets, artists, filmmakers, dissident political figures,
journalists - each with a text about subject.
Besides this project, Lemkhin made many portraits of Western
cultural figures, including Derek Walcott, Czeslaw Milosz, Randy Newman,
Michelangelo Antonioni, Allen Ginsberg, Israel Lopez, Joseph Mankiewicz,
Eduardo Galeano, Dizzy Gillespie and others.
His photographs appeared in American and European periodicals
including The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Nikon
News, Boston Globe, Moscow News, Literaturnaia Gazeta, Ogoniok and many
others. Since emigrating from the Soviet Union Mikhail Lemkhin has
published more than three hundred literary pieces, and almost four hundred
pieces of photography work.
Throughout his career Mikhail Lemkhin participated in more than 30
photography exhibitions including 14 personal exhibitions. His photographs
are being held in private collections of Michelangelo Antonioni (Rome),
Vaclav Havel (Prague), Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky (New York), Nobel
laureate Derek Walkott (Trinidad), Olga and Henry Carlisle (San Francisco),
Dusan Makavejev (Paris), Elliott and Rhoda Levinthal (Palo Alto), Richard
Salzman (San Fransisco), Manoel de Oliveira (Lisbon), Otar Iosseliani
(Paris), Vasiliy Livanov (Moscow), Maria and Andrei Sinyavsky (Paris),
Philip Kaufman (San Francisco), Michael Kaganovich (Philadelphia), Charles
Junkerman (Stanford), in collection of University of California at Berkeley
(Pacific Film Archive), in collection of San Francisco Film Society, in
collection of San Jose State University (School of Humanities and the
Arts). Large collection of his photographs was purchased by Stanford
University (Green Library).
Mikhail Lemkhin is a member of The International P.E.N. Club and
National Press Photographers Association. In November 1989 and in August
1992 Lemkhin won the International Photographer Magazine Award.
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