Photo Exhibition in Peter and Paul Fortress
Reflection of cityscapes off the water introduces the audience to a specific reality. In this exhibition, the photographer compares the reflected landscapes of two different yet similar cities – St. Petersburg and Amsterdam.
Two objects are present in every reflection – a visible and an invisible world. When separated from the physical world, reflection becomes phenomenon itself. When such reflections are intentionally recreated the results are always an artistic commentary, whether they are a photograph or a pictorial landscape.
Reflections, like the nature of all things, are vague and often inexplicable. The human mind is merely a reflection of its environment. Human beings are merely mirrors in a world of reflections. Every individual communicates with the physical world “through the other side of the looking glass”.
Maria Kremneva’s photographs explore the coexistence of reality and reflection through the documentation of cities with watery spaces.
To refer to reflections in the water as “mirror images” is merely convention. The water is never still, it fluctuates, moves, ripples, freezes with crust of ice, lives. Reflections, as independent phenomenon, are always altered in one way or another. Images reflected off the water are modified in a special way, in accordance with its own laws. The play of color and light in her photographs charms the audience and leads the viewer deeper into the mysterious Looking Glass. An attentive observer with a romantic imagination will see not only facades but also their spectral inhabitants as they emerge inexplicably from behind the Looking Glass.
Knowledgeable viewers will certainly be reminded of the Impressionists and Postimpressionists artists of the 20th century.
This creative play on the world of reflection will not only fill the viewer with aesthetic pleasure but with an appreciation for the volatility of world phenomenon.
TV program from the opening of the exhibition TV program about the exhibition
