Kharkiv School of Photography
This first KSOP was represented by the Vremia Group founded in 1971 by Jury Rupin and Evgeniy Pavlov within the Kharkiv Regional Photo Club and later diverged from it.
[9][10] Ukrainian photography experienced a revival in the period of the Khrushchev Thaw (mid 1950s–mid1960s),[3] when the details of Stalin's regime and propaganda slowly started to surface in Soviet society.
Starting with this period, new sources of information showed people that the Soviet Union was not as perfect as was pictured, and strongly influenced further the development of society as a whole and of art in particular.
The Sixtiers Movement started fighting to establish new forms and expressions of reality in art, bringing back avant-garde traditions.
These clubs were an integral part of professional and democratic movements developing in the city's culture, and made photographic art legitimate.
"[6] Boris Kosarev and Vasyl Yermylov, the well-known representatives of the Kharkiv avant-garde movement of the 1920s, sparked a "new wave" art that resulted in radical artistic actions.
According to some, KSOP denied anything connected to the Soviet Union, sought artistic freedom, and worked as an underground group, despite strong restrictions in photography methods different from the standard, a number of places, items and subjects prohibited for photographing, and frequent government searches of private and public spaces.
[9] With the decline of Soviet ideology in the 1970s and expanded freedom of expression in the late 1980s,[29] Kharkiv photography started to appear more publicly[26] and gain international recognition.
[9][6][30][13] During the 1980s, KSOP developed further and gained a new generation of members: Viktor Kochetov, Roman Pyatkovka, Sergiy Solonsky, Andriy Avdeyenko, and Leonid Konstantinov.
[31] Despite the deplorable social and economic situation in Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapse, the artistic life developed through the private initiatives of the photographers.
[33] Another institution, which played a significant role in the cultural development of Kharkiv in the late 1990s – early 2000s, was the Palitra gallery, organized by Andriy Avdeyenko in 1996 and over the years hosting multiple influential art exhibitions.
[27] Despite the name, the museum focuses not only on the preservation and presentation of KSOP work, but also on collecting photos of new generations of Kharkiv photographers and other Ukrainian and international artists.
In search of new artistic expression, they showed behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Soviet "ideological facade" created by commonplace socialist realism.
Avant-garde style flourished in various forms in Kharkiv, including architectural constructivism represented by the globally-known Gosprom building and conceptualism, which focused on connecting images and words in art.
[58][18] Despite the fact that the members of KSOP believed their artistic photography did not rely on any history or tradition, today their work is considered an extension of the avant-garde style widely popular in the 1920s.
[69][70] Small details indicated that KSOP artists were avant-gardists, such as a symbol of an owl (a sign that is connected to the Kharkiv avant-garde history and used by the Vremia Group); or new photography methods, that referenced futurist ideas of the beginning of 20th century.
[71] Avant-garde traditions are still clearly traceable in the art of the newest generation of Kharkiv artists in the 2000s, who keep experimenting and use social media platforms to bring the connection between image and text to a new level.
[1][40] Developing avant-garde principles and navigating around socialist realism dogmas, members of the Vremia Group invented their own visual language and used irony in their art[1][40][4][72] — the latter considered an important component of the Kharkiv school.
[64] Expanding on older practices (montage, collage, and others), Kharkiv photographers came up with the techniques, methods, and principles that today are considered their signature inventions.
[4] Another Kharkiv technique widely discussed by critics from abroad was the "blind spots" method, which was used to cover authors' sharp statements and in opposition to the "see-through aesthetics" promoted by country's officials.
[4][30][9] Roman Pyatkovka, who joined the Kharkiv school in the 1980s, used common KSOP techniques in his Fantoms of the 30s project, dedicated to the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine.
[4] His colleague, Sergey Bratkov, worked on photos connecting "brutality and tenderness, comedy and tragedy," which are often considered main characteristics of Kharkiv School.
[26] Their work is largely based on Kharkiv and its artists, including photographers of previous generations and has strong social and political contexts.
The Case History photo project, considered Mikhailov's most controversial work, was created at the edge of fine art and documentary photography.
[19][24][64] Although Mikhailov emigrated to Germany, he often visits Ukraine on personal and public matters, such as working on projects, giving lectures, or participating in exhibitions.
[64][63][5][86][1] Sergey Bratkov, one of Mikhailov's "disciples" was known as "one of the most promising" Kharkiv School representatives during its formative years[35] and later became one of the best-known photography classics of Ukraine and Russia with his works exhibiting in Belgium, USA, Switzerland, Spain, France, and Germany.
[89][91] Combining his artistic interests in various projects and performances he created notable projects: The Cupboard (We All Eat Each Other, 1991), which consisted of photographs put inside water- or air-filled glass jars; The Parcel, where Bratkov put photographs into a concrete slab; and The Frozen Landscapes (1994), created as tribute to 45 Kharkiv homeless people who froze to death.
[35][89] Bratkov never limited his subjects, taking photos of female soldiers, businessmen, sailors, drunks and prostitutes, and other people of any age, gender, or social status.
[35][89] In late 2000s, from photographing separate heroes, as he referred to them, Bratkov transferred his attention to group photos and large crowds of people exploring post-Soviet society.
[91][92] Another work that explored and analyzed Soviet and post-Soviet reality, as well as the question of identity was the photo series "Empire of Dreams" created in 1988 and re-invented in 2016–2017.
