Carola Allemandi

Misha Maslennikov, photographing the steppe

I discovered Misha Maslennikov’s photography and gaze during the ethical photography festival in Lodi. The work “The Don Steppe” was exhibited, summarized in just 14 images. Misha’s eye sees what cannot be said, and makes visible those original elements from which man himself derives: space, infinity, white, shadow. Thanks to a formal cleanliness and a refinement in the shots that are typical of him, he seems to perform his prophetic gesture with incomprehensible, almost angelic lightness. The infinite space that men who live in the steppe have in their eyes and carry around with them relives and is reflected in the images that Misha captures to fix them forever.
Black and white and extreme synthesis are the compositional tools that resonate most in his way of photographing, making the images real sounding boards capable of creating an infinite echo, managing to fill with its reverberations the empty and boundless space that extends around them.

Carola Allemandi