St. Petersburg in Black & White

Black and White Petersburg, an exhibit that ran this past fall and winter at the National Museum of St. Petersburg History, is a stark and honest journey from the city’s founding to the present.

A mixture of graphic art and photography, Black and White Petersburg is the brainchild of three partners: Ludmila Lipskaya, of Luke & A Gallery of Modern Art in London, Alexander Kitaev, a prominent St. Petersburg photographer, and Julia Demidenko of the St. Petersburg History Museum.

“St. Petersburg is the historic capital of both Russian engraving and photography,” said Demidenko. “The original plan was to show color artworks as well, but eventually we chose to exhibit only black-and-white graphic and photographic images of the city. In both these art forms there is always a pause—whether purely technical or otherwise—before the image is revealed.  This pause gives the artist an opportunity to dwell on his creation. Besides, the duality of black and white symbolizes the spectral, metaphysical nature of St. Petersburg.”

Initially planned as part of a visual program to show images of St. Petersburg in London, the St. Petersburg city administration’s 300th Anniversary Committee decided to first unveil the exhibit in St. Petersburg as a part of the preliminary anniversary festivities. Black and White Petersburg will travel to London in March and then to Vienna in September (see page 53 for more information).

After founding St. Petersburg in 1703, Peter I immediately commissioned artists to create engravings of the new capital to promote it in Europe. “During the Petrine time, engravers were frequently reproducing the images of a city that did not exist outside Peter’s vision. Hence the mythology of St. Petersburg the ghost city, a city that was not there,”  explained Demidenko.

As St. Petersburg expanded, so did the number of graphic artists depicting its new landmarks. These early engravings, including fascinating aerial views, portray St. Petersburg as a logically planned, contemporary city—even as it struggled to flourish amidst a backdrop of hostile elements, uncooperative terrain, and a conspicuously small population.

With the advent of photography in the mid-1800’s,  printmaking was deemed inferior and engravers fell from favor. Early photographs from the exhibition evoke the decaying imperial splendor of Russia’s fading monarchy and segue into more desolate representations of Petrograd and a besieged Leningrad.

In the 1960’s,  graphic art enjoyed a renaissance and grew in tandem with photography as a means of depicting both the official glamour of Soviet life and its seamy side: crumbling façades in the historic city center, wild, overgrown courtyards, and bundled-up pedestrians making their way on a cold winter day.

“During this period, photographs were sometimes rendered on special paper with new techniques so that they might resemble graphic art,” said Demidenko.  “While at the same time, engravers and lithographers began to use photographs in their work, imitating the features that had, early on in the history of photography, been attributed to technological imperfection or inept camera operation.”

However realistic and objective the images featured in Black and White Petersburg may seem, Demidenko credits these artists with creating and maintaining a specific mythology and ‘iconography’ of this city. “The engravers and photographers featured in this exhibition did more than merely record a real city and its changes over time,” she says. “They conjure up a haunting image of St. Petersburg.”   RL