Broken Slide, Moscow, 1982 © Boris Savelev, via Photo Espana.
When perestroika came about, dealers in the United States and Europe travelled to Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the quest for ‘authentic voices’. Secret City: Photographs of the USSR by Boris Savelev (Thames and Hudson, 1988) was the outcome of this effort and became the first monograph in the West devoted to an unofficial photographer from the now-defunct USSR. Now this exhibition is presented as a broader retrospective on Savelev up to today. It surveys the six decades in which he captured the everyday making—not only taking—photographs: from his beginnings in black and white with his Iskra 6×6 and his Leica, including his colour pictures in the 1980s with both Soviet Owarchrome and Western Kodachrome film, until his incorporation of digital technology
From Time Magazine, covering an earlier exhibition at the Michael Hoppen gallery:
Savelev, who spent his working life in the former Soviet Union as a rocket engineer, brings the same methodical eye to his photography and printing process.
Personally I like this image for its small burst of colour in a nearly monochrome landscape, done without the trickery that's usually required for that effect. His other works are well worth a look, too.
