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13/3/2007

Sergey Maximishin

Galerie Albert Benamou, Paris

Les deux versants de l'Oural

Russian photographer Sergey Maximishin is to display, at the Albert Benamou gallery in Paris his implacable testimonies of the world, from the 14th March up until the 7th April 2007. From his travels in countries outside the international political scene, ravaged by war or abandoned by the media and thus forgotten by the general public, Sergey Maximishin brings back poignant and deeply moving images that reveal its artistic sense and its humanity. His sensibility takes him to territories where chaos has settled in. The photos are taken at the peril of his life and often under extreme conditions in North Korea, in Iraq, and in the countries of the former Soviet Union. A realism without defect and the neutrality of his images reveal a hardened reporter but also a man marked by compassion. Through his pictures, Maximishin denounces the distress of human beings amidst the grip of natural disasters.

One can see a girl sitting near her doll and playing with the sand which buried this once prosperous place on the North of Russia, transformed into a ghost coastal city of 300 inhabitants, following the aftermath of an ecological disaster. The artist also denounces the military dictatorships and their absurdness (for instance, photos of North Korean soldiers standing straight and still on the border of South Korea), as well as the misery of abandoned children and their daily struggle to survive by themselves (such as orphans from the streets of St-Petersburg).

Maximishin focuses almost exclusively on the everyday life, and by his meetings, he tries above all to tell how the others live. According to him, the emotion given by photography is not different from painting, the theater, the cinema or sculptures; as he explains it himself, harmony between shapes contents is a criteria by which a good image is realised: "Contents (what is or are photographed) are conversations carried out between men. The shape is a conversation between man and God". Working only with natural light and never retouching his photos, Maximishin admits to be very close to the photographic style of his colleague Yuri Kozyrev, Time Magazine Correspondent in Moscow.

Born in 1964, having spent his childhood in Kerch, in the Crimea, Maximishin was given his very first photographer's assignment : that of a report on Fidel Castro's visit to his regiment, whilst he was doing his military service at the heart of the group Soviet Military Force in Cuba from 1985 to 1987. His vocation was launched and after having studied in St.Petersburg's faculty of photojournalism, he became a permanent photographer of the Russian newspaper 'Izvetia', the Russian newspaper, and works as well with 'Focus', the German Agency. Prize-winner of numerous awards (two World Press in 2004 and 2006) has led to the fact that, some of the most important newspapers and international magazines, (The Times, The Wall street Journal, etc.) regularly call on him.

The selection of photos made by Albert Benamou and Albert Koski reveal the most striking stages of his journeys and of his critical vision of humanity.

Image: Monastere Aleksandro Svirsky Region de Leningrad, 2001 © Sergey Maximishin

Opening: 14.03.2007 . 5 pm

Galerie Albert Benamou
16, avenue Matignon Paris
Hours: Mon-Sat 10-19

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