Zhenya Mironov

Building a metaphor

Photography, like cinema, has drama and direction. In my visual productions I take items from the real environment as actors and then organise a new type of conflict by joining them together.

Kuleshov proposed a theory that the juxtaposition of adjacent frames in a film montage sequence can not only create a combined content, but even change our understanding of the content in the first frame, depending on the content of the second. As an experiment he combined the same close-up of the actor I. Mozzhukhin bearing an indifferent expression with three diverse frames: a plate of hot soup, a girl in a coffin and a child happily playing. After watching it viewers said they had seen three different shots of I. Mozzhukhin’s face. In the first instance they thought he expressed hunger. In the second, grief at the loss of a loved one. In the third, delight at watching a child play.

I am not re-enacting the Kuleshov Effect, but using it as a recognised dramatic and directorial mechanism. But I try to organise the principle of this collision between pictures in my own way. In pairs I organise a combination of subjects that are externally very similar, but not previously related. The resulting conflict is resolved in the mind of the viewer, engendering a third plane. A plane in which the properties and quality of one subject is transferred to another, they interact and produce a new synthetic image — a metaphor. A new type of perception.

Born in Tver in 1988. Graduated from the Moscow University of Culture and Arts (Yuri Babich studio). Has participated in exhibitions since 2008. In 2012 participated in the MAP Toulouse 2012 Photography Festival in France. Nominated for the Pyotr Konchalovsky Prize.