ROSPHOTO presents the project “European photography of the 1950s–1960s”
The exhibition “European Photography of the 1950s–1960s” features over 100 original gelatin silver prints by prominent photographers from France, Italy, the Netherlands, and other countries, drawn from the collection of the Union of Art Photographers of Russia. This unique collection was transferred to The State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSPHOTO in 2022 and comprises more than 20,000 items: photoprints, glass and film negatives, photographic equipment, and archival documents.
The collection was established in the postwar years by Yevsey Samoylovich Byaly, who founded the Central Museum of Photography in Moscow. In the early 1990s, these materials became part of The Union of Photographers of Russia. Through the efforts of its chairman, Andrey Ivanovich Baskakov (1948–2014), the following archive was preserved and enriched.
European photography of the 1950s–1960s evolved within the framework of national schools. Although their methods and genres differed, they shared a common engagement with the issues of the postwar period. The prominent figures of the time were familiar with the horrors of World War II firsthand: the French photographer Édouard Boubat, was deported to Germany, Izis Bidermanas was rescued from Nazi prisons by the French partisans. Whereas Parisian photographer Robert Doisneau took part in the resistance movement. It is no coincidence that they consciously addressed the joys of peaceful life. These photographers, along with their French colleague Willy Ronis, who poetically documented the everyday life of the French, are celebrated as foremost representatives of humanist photography, characterized by a deep humanity in their images. Life in the early 1950s was only beginning to recover.
Life in the early 1950s was only beginning to recover. The delicate balance between the newly restored peace and the lingering drama of the past was captured by Italian photographers such as Gianfranco Fontana (Chronicle of Poor Love), Francesco Giovannini (Artisan), Luciano Scattola (Sail, Overalls), Fulvio Roiter (On the Gela-Niscemi road, Sicily), and Toni del Tin (The Van, Suburbs, Veteran).
The humanist orientation of European photography sought a common visual language by drawing on artistic achievements of the past, such as Modernist-era Pictorialism, photomontage, and Constructivist approaches to journalistic photography. All of these formal approaches aimed to transform everyday reality, extracting beauty from the ordinary elements — the texture of a wall, the face of an elderly person, a simplistic landscape. On the one hand, the photographers took bold decisions, following in the footsteps of the avant-garde. On the other hand, they sought out connection to tangibility. Their images reflected the reality of the world around them, making these photographs material, concrete traces of lived experience.
During the 1950s and 1960s, international exhibitions and photography salons became prominent. The reverse side of many prints bears stamps and labels, tracing the rich history of each work, featured in cities such as Moscow, Lisbon, Nice, Paris, Rome, Venice, Milan, Antwerp, and more. While many of these photographs have been published in albums and monographs, visitors to ROSPHOTO, for the first time in over fifty years, will be able to see the original prints in person.
Video from the exhibition "European Photography of the 1950s–1960s"
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