Né en 1885, Alexander Grinberg est l'un des photographes russes les plus importants du XXe siècle.
Born in 1885, Alexander Grinberg is one of the most respected Russian photographers of the twentieth century. He experienced the Russian revolution, the Civil War, two world wars and Stalinist repression. He demonstrated a strong interest in photography from an early age, taking his first photograph at the age of ten. By the age of twenty-two, he was already an active member of the Russian photographic community, where he became a leading creative force. In 1908 he was awarded the silver medal in the All-Russian photo exhibition in Moscow and the gold medal in the international photo-exhibition in Dresden, this was the beginning of his international fame. In 1914 Grinberg was invited to work at the Khanzhankov film studio in Moscow. He went on to work behind the camera for numerous studios. In the 1920s, due to his cinematographic expertise, he became an instructor at the State Technical Institute of Cinematography. Here he began his association with Sergey Eisenstein, whom he photographed. His prestige was on the rise throughout the 1920s, until the early 1930s when under the storm of the cultural revolution, the pictorialist masters of Soviet photography came under fire as "depraved," and Grinberg fell out of favor. The new cultural policy dictated that any eroticism in artistic forms was a remnant of bourgeois idleness, and inappropriate for Soviet society. Nevertheless, Grinberg risked one more exhibition of his work in 1935, displaying images of partially dressed women. This work raised a storm of criticism from the Soviet government and Grinberg was arrested and sentenced to a labor camp for distribution of pornography. His brother managed to save Grinberg’s negatives from destruction by the authorities. By 1939 he was released on early parole for good behavior and industriousness, although by that time he had permanently lost his sense of smell. He resumed his work as a photographer for a variety of institutions. After the second world war, Grinberg worked for a modeling agency, photographing for fashion designers. Later, in the 1950s, he made portraits of various famous Soviet actors and scientists. After devoting his whole life to photography, Alexander Grinberg died in 1979.
MacDougall Auctions, one of the three top Auctioneers of Russian art in the world, has announced the opening of a new department of international photography. On 21 May it will have an inaugural sale, The World through Pilgrims’ Eyes, Rare 19th and 20th Century Photography Auction. All works come from two important European collections of photography; most of them were purchased directly from the artists’ estates.
The sale features an extremely rare set of six daguerreotypes by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, one of the most important early European masters and a pioneer of travel photography. Ironically, his works were not exhibited during his lifetime; they became widely known a hundred years after his death. In 2003 a daguerreotype of his was auctioned for almost one million dollars, setting a worl...
What is PROzavod? It stands for a major exhibition of The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography that came out of the idea to show the best soviet industrial photography and has turned into a genuine research on the evolution of the image of factory and worker in Russia between avant-garde 1920s and present day.
© F.Grinberg - Atommash, 1974
PROzavod is an industrial story told by the medium of photography, collage and cinema. It is a kind of media archeology in the visual field. There is an avid interest toward industrial aesthetics all over the world which appears in various disciplinary researches (sociology, design, urban studies) and in art practices at the exhibition halls. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of the industrial architecture in Europe have long become classical; David Lynch&rsq...