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Old-School Film Photographer Alexander Kladov
Alexander Kladov is an old-school Belarusian film photographer known for his documentary projects, expressive street portraits and dramatic long exposure landscape photographs. For his commercial and artistic projects he often uses vintage medium format cameras, classic black and white materials, analogue photo developing and printing technologies.
About photographer Alexander Kladov
Documentary photography – as practiced in much of the rest of Europe, generally meaning a concerned visual author tackling broad, real-life themes in their self-initiated projects – was the ‘hole in the doughnut’, so to speak. There was a limited circle of very talented, mid-career photographers who had found their voices and established their reputations in late Soviet times or immediately after, who straddled the line between art and documentary in their work.
When people speak of post-Soviet Belarus – a country that somehow manages to be both right on the edge of Europe and almost completely unknown in the West – the usual consensus conjures a land ‘frozen in time’. Meaning a kind of Brezhnev-era stasis, democratic progress blocked – in perhaps equal measure – by an autocratic government and the weak sense of national identity among the Belarusian populace, who have historically been under one boot or another.
But politics aside, there is a striking change on at least one cultural level. When I first visited and began photographing in Belarus in 2000, the local photography scene was very different than it is today. With a state-controlled media, much press photography was of the most generic variety. On the other end of the spectrum was some rather slick, conceptual fine-art photography that too often bordered on kitsch.
But what was notably lacking at the time was the next generation of photographers, those who could act as sensitive observers and interpreters of the society around them. A rare few people and institutions carried the flame forward and nurtured the documentary tradition. What has emerged, slowly but inexorably over the last decade, is a crop of younger photographers determined to not just connect with international currents in photography, but to put their drive, new aesthetics, and varied points of view in service of better understanding their Belarus. These are photographers with a worldview, yet are deeply attached to their troubled and little-known homeland.
Documentary photographer Alexander Kladov is among the finest of this dynamic new generation. His method of portraiture – quiet, unhurried, studied, sensitive, direct but atmospheric – is very effective at peeling away the layers of the young people he focuses on and, as importantly, their surroundings. Far from the recently rehabilitated Potemkin polish of central Minsk, he explores the margins of the city, a somewhat untended garden of self-contained kids playing in still air, air that seemingly has been bottled too long but refracts the light in magical ways. Stasis made nearly visible, and in fact quite beautiful.
Alexander is not searching for what is bad, or good. With grace and equanimity, he intuitively gravitates toward what simply IS, and gives it a gentle caress. He seems to understand that any exploration of Belarus that hopes to reach a wider audience must show not just Belarusians but Belarus. This visual balance is key, this depiction of modest Belarusians amid the suggestion of their land, their homes, their territory, their dreams.
What will they make of it? Seems to be the question. It’s still too soon to know. Belarusians are often called stoic, and it’s true there is no sense of urgency in the photos, no restlessness, no pathos, no implied manifesto. For now, for these young people in their gorgeous light in the bottle, it’s enough to present themselves for the lens, and for our consideration. This seems to be enough for Alexander Kladov as well, which is one of the special gifts of his work.
CV of Alexander Kladov
Publications
- 2012 Documentary project War Habits was published in the book of modern Belarusian photographers BY NOW sponsored by Goether-Institut, project curator Matthias Harder
- 2012 Portrait photos published in the book A Day in the World by the project Aday.org
- Der Spiegel magazine
- Morgenbladet newspaper
- Bolshoi magazine
- «On Air» magazine
- «Sapiens» magazine
- «SEXUS» magazine
Photographic Contest Awards
- 2024 Editors’ Pick for “YOUTH” photographic competition by Life Framer portal
- 2020 Participation in the international exhibition project «Alphabet of War» at National Center of Contemporary Arts of the Republic of Belarus. Photographs, archival and modeled artifacts, installations, paintings and graphic sheets are brought together in the exhibition to create a context for research and search for answers to newly emerging questions related to how we perceive and react to the messages of the Second World War / Great Patriotic War today, how they are read by the contemporary person and what original meanings are preserved in the historical memory of our contemporaries.
- 2015 Shortlisted in Belarus Press Photo – 2015 contest in «Portrait series» category, honorable mention of Jury
- 2014 Winner of the Golden Pen – 2013 (Zolotoe Pero) journalistic prize in category «Documentary Reportage»
- 2011 Belorussian Wedding Photography Awards: Wedding Slideshow (1st place), Photo of Traditions (2nd place), Photo Series (3rd place)
- 2010 Photo Life’s Image International: «People» category (4th place), Canada
- 2010 II International Photographic Competition «Man and Sea» finalist, Krasnodar, Russia
- 2010 Golden Medal of the Sevastopol Photographic Salon, Ukraine
- 2008 Russian Wedding Photographers Association Competition: Wedding Photographer of the Year (2nd place), Bride’s Portrait (3rd place), Moscow, Russia
- 2005 Kodak ProFotoArt Competition finalist, Minsk, Belarus
- 2005 Winner of photographic contest «Sport for Peace and Development» organized by UN in Belarus
Group Exhibitions
- 2015 «BY NOW» project exhibition at ifa-Galerie Berlin, Germany
- 2014 «BY NOW» project exhibition at 6th European Month of Photography, Berlin, Germany
- 2013 «BY NOW» project exhibition at International Festival of Photography, Lodz, Poland
- 2012 «Urban Life», Poland
- 2010 Israel Photographic Salon, Tel-Aviv
- 2010 PHOTOVISA II International Photographic Festival, Krasnodar, Russia
- 2010 4th Sevastopol Photographic Festival, Ukraine
- 2008 Exhibition «Minsk Photographs. Citizens», Belarus
- 2007 Photographic Exhibition «on vit ici. bonjour», Paris, France
- 2007 Photographic Exhibition «Drive-2», Minsk, Belarus
- 2007 Photographic Exhibition «The Negatives», Belarus
- 2005 Photographic Exhibition «Kodak ProFotoArt»
Education
- 2011 Nordic Photographic Experience workshops and lectures by Arja Hyytiinen (Finland), Pieter Ten Hoopen (Sweden), Morten Andersen (Norway), Nikolay Hovalt (Denmark)
- 2009 Documentary photography workshop. «Documentary design» by Koen Geurts (The Hague, Netherlands)
- 2002 Art-photography workshop «Holland Invasion» by Getver
Collections
Belarusian Contemporary Art Museum, private collections.
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