Yakutia, Siberia of Siberia

Afterimage, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Bruno Chalifour

YAKUTIA, SIBERIA OF SIBERIA

By Andreas Horvath. Bern: Benteli. 160pp. (hb)

This book by photographer and film-maker Andreas Horvath consists of black and white photographs in travelog form, in a tradition illustrated by Robert Frank with The Americans (1958). Instead of an introduction, as the one by Jack Kerouac in the American 1959 version of Frank's book. Horvath asked Monica Muskala to write a text that intersperses the images and separates them in blocks/chapters. The images were made in Siberia but most of the photographer's focus is on the people who live there in small villages, seemingly at the end of the world. We see almost car-less dust streets in what looks like a very rural area of Russia without any trace of real industry except for an open-air mine. The only billboards are remnants of the Soviet era, an episode of Siberia's history that did not prevent the local population from keeping its traditions and rites, as illustrated by the photographer.

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Horvath's work is more in a vein half-way between August Sander and Bruce Davidson: the book is essentially a gallery of situational portraits mainly taken outdoors. Most of the portraits are contexualized by what seems to be a carefully selected background. In many cases the photographer plays with the relationships that the frame established between one small element in the foreground and the "social" landscape in the background. In other words, the subject is rather unusual and new but the esthetic is not. The photographer used two different formats, 35 mm and a waist-level square medium format camera (as revealed by the low angle of the photographs and the flat horizons that cut across the silent "sitters" bodies). In general Horvath shows more control in the carefully-composed square images. The general printing quality of the book is good but the reader may still have a problem with double-spreads that bar the images with their gutters. Horvath's work thence sits comfortably between subjective and documentary travelog genres, with saturated color it would probably come close to a National Geographic photo-essay. One can only regret that for lack of time or fluency in the local language the photographer did not accompany the images with interviews that would reach deeper under the silent surface of things and people. However it must be acknowledged that the facial expressions that Horvath consistantly caught on film, echoed by rather desolate landscapes, convey a strong sense of silent isolation and resignation, one that seems consistant with life at one dead-end of the world.

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