Home sweet home: a photographer explores the meaning of personal space
A new Moscow exhibition is exploring our need for refuge through photography and installations.
Photographer Bogdan Shirokov’s first solo show, Topophilia, is a psychological study of respite and the role space plays in a person’s inner life. Warm-filtered photographs of the artist in his family home are framed in a childlike pale pink passepartout, while black and white portraits and landscapes are printed on white curtains.
The Lazy Mike gallery, which is hosting the show, has dedicated each of its four walls to one of Shirokov’s themes: “The Road to Home”, “Forgiveness and Truce”, “Elements of Refuge”, and “The Throw Into The World”. All examine our physical and psychological relationship with our family, our childhood, and our memories.
“Whether they are past homes, or past memories, even if these spaces are no longer connected with our present or future, they stay with us — and we return to them for inner peace,” the artist says.
Shirokov has long been recognised as a photographer, with a continuing interest in contemporary masculinity and the way it manifests in Russian society. For his solo show, he also produced several installations: a bed covered in white linen and decorated with green plants and an iPhone covered in pebbles. “The stones are a literal and metaphorical gesture: a blockage of the information flow and a hint to the viewer about the importance of turning attention inwards or onto the world around us,” the artist explains.
“Each of the objects connects the subconscious with the moments and places in which we felt good,” he told The Calvert Journal.
