Roman Pyatkovka
© Roman Pyatkovka. Photo: Vladimir Leliuk, 2009
About The Artist:
Roman Pyatkovka (b. 1955) started his engagement with photography in the early 1980′s. Pyatkovka repeatedly emphasized Boris Mikhailov's influence on his work that demonstrated a range of techniques that had become a hallmark of the Kharkiv School. However, it was the notions of brutality and sexuality, bordering on pornography, that became Pyatkovka's main contribution to the Kharkiv School aesthetics. Nude bodies (forbidden before the 1990s in the Soviet Union) in provocative poses and situations, along with lesbian scenes and orgies, have always infested his images. The titles of his projects speak for themselves: Adultery, Abortion, Bitch Love, Games of the Naked, etc.
In his 1989 The Maternity Ward Pyatkovka transforms a critical reportage of the miserable state of Soviet hospitals into an art photography project by locally applying aniline dyes to black and white documentary prints.
In 1990, Pyatkovka created The Fantoms of the 1930's, a rare exception to his style – a series of portraits dedicated to the Great Famine of 1932 – 1933 in Ukraine, when millions of people were starved to death by the Communist regime. It was partly based on found material of the period and partly staged. In both cases Pyatkovka used multiple reproductions of the original images with hand scratching of the photo.
In 1995 The Games of Libido (“the carnival insolence of shameless youth” according to the artist's statement) Pyatkovka invented a “negative montage” technique, where fragments of original black-and-white negatives were glued onto a glass plaque surface and printed (manually) immediately while the glue was corroding the film. The resulting images produced a strikingly unusual multi-layered visual effect and depending on the dexterity of the printer were limited to an issue of 3 to 5 images.
View Portfolio: Games of Libido
View Portfolio: Maternity Ward
View Portfolio: Phantoms of 1930s
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