Kharkiv School of Photography: Soviet Censorship to New Aesthetics:
Part 3 - Contemporary Photographers Exhibition 1
© Igor Manko
Igor Manko
Igor Manko (b. 1962) was one of the Gosprom group artists in the 1980’s.
Because of the annexation of Crimea, Manko had to stop working on his long term 100 Views of Mount Kara-Dag project that ran from 2009 to 2013. This work, as his others, moves beyond the surface content to considering the personification of identity (as broadcasted through the various beach towels worn by his subjects).
His other works that revolve around background images of the Kara-Dag mountain in south east Crimea, walks the line between abstraction and commentary.
Highly noticable in Igor Manko's contemporary work, as demonstrated in Golden Ratio of Ukrainian Landscape (2014) is a higher level of adstraction and palatalization. In imposing Ukraine's colors, blue and yellow, on flags, fields of sand and pools of water, and other environment surfaces, Manko is claiming this to be Ukraine. (The viewer of the work needs to place this work in the context of the separatist conflict.). Ending this portfolio with a red rectangle on dried barren land clearly positions his work in the political realm. (Roberto Muffoletto, 2015)
Igor Manko about Golden Ratio of Ukrainian Landscape:
Once, still in Soviet times, Boris Mikhailov used to say that he cannot photograph a landscape without man-made metal structures in it. Thus ideological factors ruin traditional art genres. Likewise the current threat to independence ruins the beauty of picturesque Ukrainian landscape, in return making more conspicuous and significant its everyday/mundane color elements.
Portfolios
View Portfolio: Golden Ratio of Ukrainian Landscape 2014
From 100 Views of Mount Kara-Dag 2009-13
View Portfolio: Landscapes and People
View Portfolio: Scrolls
View Portfolio: Politics Forms and Colors
View Portfolio: Beach Towels
We welcome your comments. VASA Exhibitions are the result of various curators, artist, and photographers.