This exhibition shows a selection from Elizaveta Porodina’s multifaceted portfolio. A display of images and groups of works has been curated by the Photography Collection – the images go far beyond normal practices in the world of fashion photography. Indeed, these are portraits tinged with inner turmoil and dark foreshadowings.
In her photographs, Porodina focuses on the unbridgeable distance that separates her from her fellow human beings and foregrounds methods of disguise – no matter how close you get, how near the camera is to its subject, very often all you can see are boundaries. To capture this symbolic barrier, she uses a lot of studio equipment. She produces a painterly effect with opaque, oily glass plates and skillfully uses blurring and multiple exposures to create disturbing results. None of her photographs, either black and white or color, offers direct open access to her subjects, and the figures in her images become surfaces on which to project narratives, fantasies and self-reflections.
