Moscow 2008

…If we talk about realism in Misha Maslennikov’s photographs, then this realism is from the category of those arts to which Father Pavel Florensky gave a succinct definition of a “faint dream”. We can be like this — not explicit with our innermost, but nevertheless real — at the moment when we are touched by a wing from the “other” side. The artist’s inspiration, according to Florensky, is not valuable, for it is only raw material, psychologising, “we need his pre-morning dreams”… Maslennikov managed to capture precisely the time of “awakening”: the viewer is interested not so much in the photograph itself, but in gazing into the mysteriously real that is confirmed by the mimicry and plasticity of the photographed. Of course, the viewer’s attempt to cross the boundary of the permissible, with a claim to possess the intimate. The photographer himself does not cross this line in the slightest, carefully guarding both us and himself, as if WE are his self-portrait, consciously avoiding the direct reading of physical beauty. It is by no means an otherworldly gaze — no one has ever managed and, fortunately, will never manage to look into us from the other side — but a gaze that compels us to perform a considerable feat — to recognise that WE are beautiful unconditionally and completely. And any recognition, as we know, imposes certain obligations and requires action. The exhibition is worth visiting if only to touch the unknown in oneself, to stand still, even if only for a short while, one step away from the Stalker’s room, where being in it can lead to the irreversible fulfilment of the real…

Alexander Shumskikh