New Wave

The large-scale exhibition “New Wave: Artistic Photography of the 1970s–1980s” is dedicated to a unique period in the history of Soviet and Russian photography, when photographic art experienced an extraordinary surge, comparable in its power and significance to the era of the avant-garde in Soviet art of the 1920s–1930s.

The title of the exhibition refers to two shows held in Moscow in 1991 — “New Wave in the Photographic Art of Russia and Belarus” at the Central Museum of Cinema and “The Art of Contemporary Photography. Russia. Ukraine. Belarus” at the Central House of Artists, which led to the term ‘new wave’ becoming firmly established in the domestic photographic discourse.

The present exhibition offers an opportunity to immerse oneself in the atmosphere of this truly epic period in the history of Russian photography.

In the 1960s, Soviet photographic art saw a growing interest in amateur photography, closely connected to the development of amateur photographic practice within the framework of grassroots folk creativity in the USSR. At the same time, photographers entered photo clubs whose aesthetic pursuits were aimed not at copying reality, but at its subjective reinterpretation and active transformation through the use of diverse creative methods of shooting and printing. On exhibition walls and in the pages of photographic publications, alongside the reportage and study photographs that were customary for exhibitions, began to appear whose aesthetics were akin to graphic works. Within this aesthetic approach, work with line and contour, as well as a heightened concern for artistic expressiveness, played a crucial role. 

Another direction of formal experimentation in the late 1960s was an interest in everyday life and in the creative transformation of reality, an approach that recalls Alexander Rodchenko’s observation: “We do not see what we look at.”

The 1970s, which brought about another generational shift against the backdrop of the era of stagnation, were marked by the emergence and flourishing of unofficial youth culture. The embodiment of this energy, and its public face, became rock musicians, artists, poets, writers, film directors, and actors. The rejection of established norms, nonconformist thinking, and the struggle for the individuality of an authorial vision made them central figures of the 1980s as well. 

Photography, which according to art historian Alexander Lavrentiev, acutely felt a “need to renew the plastic language of photographic art,” became for many of them a field of creative practice offering limitless possibilities for exploration. It was precisely in photography that, in the second half of the 1980s, an extraordinary growth occurred in the number of artists with distinct and vivid individual styles. Working at the intersection of photography, visual art, and other creative disciplines, photo artists continuously expanded the boundaries of photographic vision and redefined prevailing notions of what photographic art could be.

Among other artists whose works are included in the exhibition are Mikhail Ladeyshchikov; Evgeny Likhosherst (Cheboksary); Igor Mukhin; Nikolai Kulebyakin; Vladimir Efimov; Alexey Shulgin; Sergei Leontiev; Tatyana Liberman; Sergei Rogozhkin (Sverdlovsk); Andrei Chezhin; Sergei Sveshnikov; Yuri Tsekhnovitser; Yuri Petrochenkov; Nikolai Matrenin; Igor Vasilyev; Dmitry Vilensky (Leningrad); Sergei Kozhemyakin (Minsk); Igor Ryatov (Pavlodar); and Sergei Osmachkin (Kuibyshev).

The retrospective approach allows viewers to immerse themselves in the artistic life of the 1980s–1990s and to encounter unique photographic prints created using a wide range of authorial techniques.

Video Materials: 

Audioguide to the Exhibition: 

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Last updated on 16.01.2026