Elena Karusaar
Sergei Parajanov on the set of the film Ashik-Kerib, 1988 © ROSPHOTO
Կինոռեժիսոր Սերգեյ Փարաջանովը և դերասան Ռամազ Չխիկվաձեն․ <<Աշուղ-Ղարիբ>> ֆիլմի նկարահանման ժամանակ, 1988թ․
ՌՈՍՖՈՏՈ
Դերասան Յուրի Մգոյանի դիմանկարը․ <<Աշուղ-Ղարիբ>> ֆիլմի նկարահանման ժամանակ, 1988թ․
Yuri Mechitov
In the editing studio "Georgia-Film", 1988 © ROSPHOTO
The virtual exhibition “Alongside Paradjanov. Photographs by Yuri Mechitov and Elena Karusaar” invites the viewer to encounter the outstanding world of the cinema director Sergei Iosifovich Paradzhanov (Sarkis Hovsepi Paradzhanian, 1924–1990).
Paradzhanov’s temperament, artistry, and creative imagination attracted friends, colleagues, as well as professional photographers and accidental witnesses to his “madness”. Always an artist, whatever the circumstances, he directed life itself as he did film, becoming both the protagonist and the source of inspiration for countless photographs. Now, with the passage of time, it is photographs that most accurately convey the paradoxical wholeness of Paradzhanov’s restless personality and reveal the unique existential experience of a person unable not to create.
The works of Yuri Mechitov and Elena Karusaar, who both met and worked with the filmmaker, bring the viewer closer to Paradzhanov than any other images, drawing us irresistibly into the “Paradzhanov space.”
In Mechitov’s images, Paradzhanov appears in his legendary home on Kote Meskhi Street in Tbilisi — a place that became a magnet for artists across the Soviet Union in the 1980s. We see him on the sets of “The Legend of Suram Fortress” and “Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani”, in moments of creative pause, among lively gatherings, and wandering the streets of the Georgian capital.
The photographic series by Elena Karusaar, a still photographer at the Lenfilm studio, offers a detailed story of the making of Paradzhanov’s final completed film, “Ashik-Kerib”.Her black-and-white prints, created for the promotion and distribution of the film, convey the atmosphere of the shoot, immersing the viewer in a world of human faces, objects, textiles, and textures that transformed Mihail Lermontov’s tale on which “Ashik-Kerib” is based.
At the same time, the exhibition “Alongside Paradjanov. Photographs by Yuri Mechitov and Elena Karusaar” speaks not only of the director, but also of the photographers themselves. In both their personal and professional approaches, they reveal an emotional attentiveness and a keen sensitivity to the many shades of their subject’s personality and talent.Yuri Mechitov’s extensive twelve-year photographic cycle devoted to Paradzhanov, created between 1978 and 1990, becomes the most complete visual testament to the filmmaker’s life and artistic presence — a body of work that has no analogue in the history of photography or world cinema.
Within the framework of her professional task, producing images for the press and promotional materials, Elena Karusaar follows the frame-by-frame creation of the film’s intricate visual fabric, shaped by the cultural traditions of Azerbaijan, Persia, and Turkey.The artistic expressiveness and suggestive power of the film, shot, like Paradzhanov’s earlier works, in color, is refracted in Karusaar’s black-and-white prints in a new and intriguing way. In them, the phenomenon of Paradzhanov’s “visual tension” reveals itself anew.
Last updated on 11.11.2025
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