The Museum of Contemporary Art, Odesa. 2015
“On April 3, 1890, the first exhibition of photographs was held in Odesa.”
(с) Vecherniaya Odesa, 1991.
Exactly 125 years ago, on April 3, 2015, the first research exhibition of photography in Odesa was launched. It is a study of photography from 1843, the year when first photographs were taken in Odesa, until the present day; an attempt to analyze key areas and trends in the development of photography in particular regions; an opportunity to visualize the parallels between historic events and their reflection on photo paper; and a search of connections between epochs and generations.
The exhibition is designed in such a way as to preserve the chronology and demonstrate the key milestones in the development of photography in Odesa with the focus on the following areas of study: the history of portrait development and analysis of person’s attitude toward their image; the study of family albums; the transition from urban landscape photographs to commercial postcards; the analysis of photographic manipulations during the Soviet era; the appearance of new media and comparison of the past practices and the twenty-first century photography.
The exhibition is based on the materials of the Odesa Local History Museum, the archives of the National M. Gorky Library and the Odesa Contemporary Art Museum, the copies of photographs and postcards from A. Drozdovskyi’s private collection, and the original works by contemporary Odesa-based artists: Kyrylo Holovchenko, Pavel Fiodorov, Mykolay Lukin, and Yuriy Boyko.