Vladimir Vorobiev

Original Photographs. Novokuznetsk, 1970s–1990s

The photographs show the everyday life of Novokuznetsk and the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant and illustrate the social and cultural atmosphere of those days

Main Building Exhibition Hall, 3rd floor

06.02.2015—05.04.2015

ROSPHOTO presents the exhibition of works by the Novokuznetsk-based documentary photographer Vladimir Vorobiev (1941–2011). The photographs taken from the late 1970s to the early 1990s show the everyday life of Novokuznetsk and the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant and illustrate the social and cultural atmosphere of those days.

Vladimir Vorobiev was born in 1941 in the small town of Krasnaya Sloboda in the Volgograd Oblast. After completion of military service Vladimir moved to Novokuznetsk and began working as a sheet-metal worker and roofer at the construction of the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant. In 1964 he found a new job at the Correspondent Bureau of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant – “KMK-film,” where he got deeply interested in photography.

In 1978 Vladimir Vorobiev cofounded a KMK-based group “Creative Photographic Association of Professional Photographers TriVA”. The group consisted of three members and friends – Vladimir Vorobiev, Vladimir Sokolayev and Alexander Trofimov. It was the first and the only officially registered group in the USSR, which practiced the social and documentary photography. The group existed from 1978 to 1981, when its activities were suspended by the Kemerovo Regional Committee of the Communist Party. After that the former participants of the group continued their careers as individual photographers.

The exhibition features the silver bromide photographs, printed from the original negatives by Vorobiev’s friend and colleague Vladimir Sokolayev. The first part of the display is dedicated to the artist’s work at “KMK-film” and to the activities of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant. The second part comprises the works created by Vladimir Vorobiev after the group “TriVA” ceased to exist. These pictures cover the everyday life of Novokuznetsk and its residents during the perestroika time.

Vladimir Vorobiev is known for his unique style, which is distinguished by truthfulness and faithful representation of the world, respect and interest towards the characters of his photo works and their feelings and emotions.