Zhenya Mironov

Rough Sunset. Japanese Plastic

‘Rough Sunset’ is a project about the decline of the normative view of an object. The title is borrowed from Pyotr Mamonov, cult figure of the Soviet underground and author of provocative performance art.

Photography preoccupied with the search for technical perfection, for the ‘optimal rules of composition’, subject matter of a heightened dramatic nature, detailed treatment of small elements in a macro image, retouching — all that is alien to me. This series is about the fact that treasures are concealed in a very different place, all you have to do is look right under your feet. We live in a world where there is constantly more information and less meaning, and I can’t see any way of changing reality other than by changing your perception. This series is about the need to step back from standard definitions, about the semantic decline of the normative, one-dimensional interpretation of everything around us, and my goal is to provoke the spectator, alter his optical perception, compel him to see another facet of one or other fragment of our surroundings.

Some five years ago I was interested by the question: can you reveal an image of silence using photography? I undertook the task of extracting an object from the visual noise and placing it in a new, clean space belonging only to that object. And I decided to turn to the visual code, the tradition of a land that has done this for centuries — Japan. I began trying to pass my vision through the prism of that code, working with the range of density in a picture, and discovered that plastic solves everything. Density can transition an unnoticed figure to the foreground or, on the contrary, render the largest and most striking elements in the frame almost invisible.

Silence is the only state where it is possible to understand subtle details: how snow sparkles, how the wind looks, how waves scurry to and fro, or how the clouds are reflected in these waves. My project is essentially about this, about holding your breath within the frame, about a new world with new qualities it never had before.