POSNER, Igor - Past Perfect

Background information

"In 2006, Russian photographer Igor POSNER, who emigrated in the 1990s, returned to his native St. Petersburg for the first time. Confronted with the changing resonance of place and memory, he created impressionistic photographs that span time. These show St.Petersburg as a half-seen and half-remembered city,. An imperfectly superimposed version, depicting where past and present intersect - a fictional city conjured in some way by the desire to find something. a lost incarnation of what was once known - a desire that will never be finally realized.
Igor POSNER tries to get a picture of what it means to deal with the past in photographic terms. There is a collision of different experiences and times. His present encounter with the city is inescapably shaped by what he remembered of it - the narrative is one of return and expectation; the dark uncertainty of these images, their haunting sense of uprootedness, is evidence of this, these places speak not only of what they are now, but also of what they may have been." (free translation of publisher's text, © Red Hook, 2017)

Content

"The photo volume 'Past Perfect' by Igor POSNER contains a city portrait of the Russian metropolis St. Petersburg, determined by memories and reflections. In about eighty black-and-white photographs taken between 2006 and 2009, the Russian photographer, who emigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s, shows the city as he sees it in everyday life as well as in encounters with people. The intentionally 'blurred' shots stand for the dreamlike, memory-evoking element that the encounter with his hometown evoked in him upon his return. The book project 'Past perfect' is synonymous with the closing of a chapter in his life. The book, bound in cloth, has great printing and the short story, 'The Return of Not Returning', written by Marydi Luca, is also well worth reading.

About the Russian photographer, Igor POSNER

Photo books by Igor POSNER