Michael Hoppen Gallery
Michael Hoppen Contemporary
3 Jubilee Place
+44 (0)20 7352 3649
London
Boris Savelev 31 Years
April 21-May 30, 2009

In 1986, at the start of Perestroika, Thomas Neurath,director of Thames and Hudson visited Moscow looking for "unofficial" artists. He selected Boris Savelev and in 1988 the monograph Secret City was published, the first book published in the west of an unofficial photographer living in the Soviet Union. Until 1988 all of the works that Boris Savelev had exhibited were black and white prints but he had been experimenting with color photography since the early 1980s. When producing Secret City, Thames and Hudson selected a group of these color photographs which had been taken using Orwachrome film. The poor quality of the color, and the additional problems of the lithographic reproduction failed to capture the complexity and density that the artist wanted. In 1987 he discovered Kodachrome film and all his color work taken on film since that time has used Kodachrome. In the years since most of Savelev's work has been an enquiry into color photography. Since 1995 most of his images have been captured digitally.

After the initial disappointment with the reproductions in Secret City Savelev started to look for alternative printing processes. He worked with C Type prints, but anxious about their fugitive nature and unhappy with the uniform surface of the paper he started looking into dye transfer prints and then pigment transfer prints. He experimented with many of the 19th century processes becoming a master of gum bichromate printing (both in black and white and colour), platinum printing and Kallitype. Cameraworks was his inspiration and pictorialist photographers like Steichen, Kertész, Lartigue and Demarchy interested him, both for the quality of the prints and for the integrity of the images.

In 1995 he was invited to Germany by Alexander Von Berswordt Walrabe to show with M Bochum. Alexander decided to produce an edition of 15 of Savelev's images and was persuaded to make them as pigment transfer prints. The process is time consuming and difficult but with the right materials it is capable of producing beautiful images of great complexity and with a slight surface relief. Permaprint was the only studio in Europe capable or realising this edition and once a visa was obtained Savelev was sent to London. Permaprint morphed into Factum Arte and moved to Madrid. Factum Arte developed the interest in surface and started building and acquiring 3D scanners. Digital printers were bought and taken to bits. It became clear they had to develop a flatbed printer. New surfaces were investigated using materials usually associated with painting. These were subjected to rigorous testing and analysis, modified and tested again. Savalev began to prepare his files to be printed in layers, a task that requires a different sensibility from normal photographic printing.

Savelev’s background was in aeronautics. Having earned a degree from Moscow’s Aviation Institute in 1972, he pursued a career as an engineer in his chosen field for a decade thereafter. But within two years of his graduation, he had also begun working free-lance in photography, which he had been interested in since he was a teenager and to which he switched permanently in 1983. He has been exhibiting and publishing pictures made over the last thirty years not only in Russia or the Ukraine, but in intensive projects he has undertaken in London, Rome, Berlin and Madrdid. Yet, despite all this cosmopolitan activity, his photographic vision has remained extraordinarily consistent and true to its origins.

At first, Savelev’s images seem to have a melancholy that can be seen as a reflection of a specifically Russian sensibility. On deeper reflection it is their humour and playfulness, their delight in moments that occur momentarily that characterise his images; odd details of human life in its urban setting are presented in a highly deliberate but off hand way. His use of colour and light is masterful: each photograph functions as a powerful abstract statement as well as a fragment of reality.

The pigment transfer prints were made at Factum Arte in Madrid. The multi-layered digital printing on Factum Arte’s flatbed printer provides a new level of control over surface and depth of tone. Each print has many layers which sit on a coating of gesso which is in turn on aluminium and then the image is waxed to complete this unique process. The resultant subtlties of tone make first hand viewing of these extraordinary prints essential.

Savelev’s extraordinary photographic work has earned him a place in major international collections worldwide, among them, the Corcoran Galley in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Staatsgallerie of Stuttgart, the Saarland Museum in Saarbrucken, Germany, our Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and many other major institutions.

Boris Savelev, Piatka, 1982, Moscow, © Boris Savelev. courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

Boris Savelev, Suburb Train, 1988, near Moscow, © Boris Savelev, courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

Boris Savelev, Red Girl, 1987, Czernowitz, © Boris Savelev, courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

Boris Savelev, Red Square Girls, 1981, Moscow, © Boris Savelev, courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

Boris Savelev, Wedding Dresses, 1991, Moscow, © Boris Savelev courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

Boris Savelev, Pioneers Chorus, 1977, © Boris Savelev, courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.