Grigoriy Yaroshenko

The Traces

Works 2001–2008

[11-03-2009]

I was working on this project for eight years and, probably, it’s not yet finished. It consists of several different series, photographed from 2001 to 2008. Only now I’ve decided to put them together at an exhibition called «The Traces». May be, in the course of time, there will be fewer traces left, many of them will be effaced or will disappear, but now I want to show them.

This is an attempt to find something of considerable importance, which has been overlooked in what is already a completed work. The idea of «The Traces» exposition is not in searching for objects of unusual camera angles, but in finding a new perspective on something that already belongs to you. I feel that the art of photography is somewhat multidimensional. The process does not end in the viewfinder an even in laboratory, it continues at the workshop and beyond, sometimes several years later. In a way it is similar to a poet gathering a collection of his poems for a book.

The traces are mere memories of what is not here anymore, hardly detected and unstable witnesses of the past. They leave the impressions in your memory just like the footprints on the wet sand. My photographs are also the traces, my own traces on paper. Beyond every photograph stands a part of life, memories, associations and rhymes.

I do not want to go into much detail and name every work included into this exhibition. I would like to only mention a project called «The growth». The project was commissioned by Mikhail Prokhorov and created during the summer 2006. I am grateful to him for his creative idea, which inspired me greatly.

I would like to thank everyone who was helping me during those eight years. I wouldn’t be able to write down all the names even on ten pages. Special thanks to Moscow House of Photography and its director Olga Sviblova, curators Elena Misalandi and Ekaterina Kondranina, «Glaz» Gallery, Sergey and Maria Burasovsky, photo laboratory of Moscow House of Photography, Tatiana Isaeva and Alexander Roschin, without whom there would be no films developed and no pictures printed for this exhibition. Magazines «Vestnik Evropy» and «Herald of Europe», Mikhail and Ekaterina Borschevsky, «Oil Trade» company and Alexander Frolov, Denis Aristarkhov and Ilya Eksler. «Foto Frame» company, Evgeniy Busarev and Andrey Volkov, «Perspektiva» agency and Irina Shilova, «MoscaMilano» Agency, Anastasia Ulanova and Philipp Zemlyanukhin, Sardar Sardarov, Alexander Brovkin, Leonid Aronchikov and Lev Melikhov. Thanks for being patient to my family, Father and Mother, wife Arisha, my children and to everyone.

Grigoriy Yaroshenko