ROCKFORD ART MUSEUM | COLLECTION | CONTEMPORARY GLASS

Misha Gordin

Although the power of manipulating photographs through double exposures, masking, montage, solarization and airbrushing by artists, dictators, spiritualists and the news media was exploited almost upon its invention, the idea of the photograph as a truthful recorder of places, events and circumstances remains largely ingrained. Misha Gordin represents one of the few, when digital manipulation still resided in unfound land, who used the photograph to create timeless landscapes inhabited by dreamlike figures, sometimes tormented, sometimes sensuous, often enigmatic, toiling in strange labors.

Born in Latvia, he grew up in a country that suffered great repression after the Soviet Union occupied and then deported hundreds of thousands of Latvians, instituting a “Russification” of the country by suppressing the many diverse cultures of the region. Socialist Realism became the state sanctified art.

In his twenties, he joined the Riga Motion Studio's special effects department. During this period, he made his first foray into photography, producing portrait and documentary photography. He found these forms of expression disappointing, abandoning them and taking interest in Soviet Non-Conformist literature and film.

With ideas fomenting, it wasn't until 1972, did Misha realize how to turn the camera in on himself and produced his first conceptual photograph. Shortly, thereafter he immigrated to the United States in 1974 to escape the repressive atmosphere.

Unusual for a photographer he sketches his ideas before he begins his photography. He also logs his time in the darkroom by the week rather than hours, meticulously masking, retouching and collaging multiple negatives before a final image is created.

Misha, like some painters and sculptures does not like to talk about the techniques that he uses to make his photographs––revealing the technique intrudes on the concepts that the photograph evokes. Influenced by poets and writers––and becoming one himself––has informed his aesthetic.

There is an odd juxtaposition, as individual parts are taken from reality, but collaged, duplicated, manipulated and taken as a whole they exist only in a world never before seen. There is at least one human occupant living in each of these worlds, an anthropomorphosis of the artist's thought and feelings that asks the viewer to become part of the world and share in the figure's experience.

Learn more about the artist at his website, www.bsimple.com.