Alexey Titarenko is a Russian born photographer and artist who began taking photographs in the 1970s. I am particularly interested in the images where Titarenko capture movement, as I feel this questions our importance as people, and if out lives will make a difference, or will they simply have been wasted.
Titarenko photographs the street in order to capture the movements of passers by, using a long exposure. This enables the surroundings to stay in focus whilst the throng of people are blurred ghost-like into one. This technique produces an eerie smoke or smog-like effect, where no one is individual anymore and are forced into becoming an anonymous grey mass. However in some of Titarenko photographs there are a couple of stationary figures who unlike the crowd, are in focus. This provides a contrast between movement and inaction, where the viewer’s attention can be focused on the subject that is still. I feel this might be a good way to produce my own images of charity shop clothing, making the old clothes the main focus, whilst people wearing new, fashionable clothes are faded into the background.
Like Woodman’s photographs, Titarenko’s are also in black and white. This gives the ghost-like mass of people a more indiscriminate feel, as no bright colours can be picked out or distinguished. It allows for the stationary subject to be the main focus if there is one present within the image. The use of black and white also enhances the eerie nature of the photographs and the suggestion that although there are people in the frame, the majority of them are not actually ‘present’, but are instead a faceless mass, their movements making them undetectable and human beings.
In many of Titarenko’s images, the ghostly masses take up a large amount of the composition. The surroundings and buildings are mostly minimal, so a greater emphasis is given to the sense of movement within the photographs. Personally I feel the movement in Titarenko’s work symbolises the fleeting nature of life, and how it can be so easily wasted of forgotten about. Titarenko’s images are like an imprint of life, capturing it before it has moved on and been left in the past. They evoke the idea that time is being wasted, something which we cannot get back.
Georgette Taylor: The Commission: Waste 