The project introduces viewers to the work of three artists — Alexander Uglyanitsa, Viktor Kalenik, and Alexey Trufanov, who came together in Minsk in 1983 to form the group META.
The history of the group cannot be separated from the broader historical processes that unfolded in the USSR from the second half of the 1970s onward. A significant role was played by the emergence of youth communities that turned to creative practices — music, photography, literature, and visual art — as a means of expanding their worldview and searching for new images and meanings beyond official culture. During this period, creatively active young people traveled extensively across the country. Cultural life was not confined to Moscow and Leningrad: student communities at higher education institutions in the capitals of the Soviet republics became new centers of artistic activity.
In this context, the future members of the group META first met. In 1983, Alexander Uglyanitsa from Stavropol and Viktor Kalenik from Minsk, both fifth-year students at the Belarusian State Theatre and Art Institute, became acquainted with Alexey Trufanov, who was about to enroll as a first-year student in the Design Department.
One of the main reasons young artists and designers turned to photography in the 1980s was the acute shortage of visual imagery. Any new visual information sparked interest and encouraged active efforts to seek it out and appropriate it. Photography was thus understood by the artists as a tool offering limitless possibilities for the creation of images.
From the very beginning, Alexander Uglyanitsa was regarded by the members of the group as its unquestioned leader. Upon first encountering Uglyanitsa’s photographs, Alexey Trufanov was struck by their unusual narratives, vivid visual language, and clear departure from the aesthetic standards of official culture. Describing Uglyanitsa’s artistic method, Trufanov notes: “He was drawn to unexpected phenomena that functioned as symbols of everyday public ‘design’—urban sculpture, signage, street propaganda displays, and new residential developments.”
The years 1983–1984 marked a period of particularly intense creative exchange within the group: daily photo shoots, collective reviews of photographs, heated discussions, followed by further shooting, processing, and printing of new works. During this same time, the group made its first attempts to present their work to a broader audience. One of their earliest street actions took place during a city festival, where META staged an unofficial, rapidly assembled exhibition, embedding it within an official exhibition-sale organized by the Minsk Union of Artists. Subsequently, the group successfully held an exhibition at the Pioneer cinema, which ultimately consolidated its status as an established creative collective.
By the mid-1980s, the members of META became increasingly integrated into the Belarusian photographic community. In 1985, following Alexander Uglyanitsa and Viktor Kalenik, Alexey Trufanov joined the classes of the creative photography studio Studio-3, led by the outstanding educator Valery Lobko at the Minsk People’s Photo Club Minsk.
The influence of the studio’s practice is particularly evident in Uglyanitsa’s exhibition series. Early, standalone black-and-white photographs give way to a series of multilayered, intricately toned prints that refer to the experience of dramatic visual perception shaped by the rapidly changing realities of a new life.
Having mastered a method of supra-artistic generalization, each member of the group contributed to expanding representations of reality in their own way. The monumentality characteristic of Viktor Kalenik’s work lends significance to every fragment he captures. Objects in his photographs acquire an intensified vitality, becoming hyperrealistic, thereby blurring the boundaries of realism itself. A plastic toy airplane appears real, while a moment seized from everyday life aspires to resemble a frame from a film one may have seen before.
The studio classes enabled the members of META to become closely acquainted with many representatives of the “New Wave” in Belarusian photography of the 1980s–1990s, to take part in exhibitions organized by the creative photography association Provintsiya, and, from 1988 onward, to participate in a number of international exhibitions significant for Belarusian photography. In the early 1990s, amid the collapse of the USSR and the resulting difficult social conditions, the group ceased its creative activity.
The photographs presented in the project demonstrate the full power of an expanded and deepened authorial vision, allowing viewers to grasp the complexity of unstaged reality as it unfolds before our eyes from moment to moment.
Interview with Igor Savchenko
Igor Savchenko is a renowned Belarusian photographer of international standing. His works are held in private and public collections in Belarus, Russia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, the United States, Denmark, Switzerland, and other countries.
In the interview, he reflects on the artists featured in the exhibition — Alexander Uglyanitsa, Viktor Kalenik, and Alexey Trufanov — on the distinctive path of photo clubs in Belarus, and on the influence of the META group on the development of Belarusian photography. He also emphasizes the importance of Valery Lobko, a teacher who played a significant role in shaping many Belarusian photographers.
Guided Tour of the Exhibition
Discover the hidden meanings of the exhibition “Transformation. Metarealism in Belarusian Photography of the 1980s–1990s” through a video tour led by its curator.
Join the video tour with Igor Lebedev and explore the unique approach of the META group. You will learn how and why the group was formed, why not all of the works may appear conventionally aesthetic, and how the artists succeeded in revealing a new reality through familiar objects. The tour also offers fresh interpretations of the imagery created by legendary Belarusian photographers and invites you to view the world of photography from an entirely new perspective.
Last updated on 16.01.2026
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