The Human as a Metaphor for the Photographer
The Human as a Metaphor for the Photographer
Contemporary photography undoubtedly inspires with its boundlessness. We believe in photography's limitless potential because it seems capable of permeating the world around us as part of our daily lives, as gallery luxury, and as a means for artistic self-discovery. It is this self-discovery through photography that I believe is the most subtle, fragile, promising, and enchanting aspect of the entire global artistic process of photography's evolution as a contemporary art form. This is a significant genre and conceptual branch that requires the photographer to demonstrate selflessness, a considerable degree of self-criticism, an absence of the desire to exoticise others, and immense personal empathetic energy capable of connecting people and infecting viewers with new meanings. In today’s article, I would like to discuss three contemporary photographers who compellingly explore the essence of humanity and are unique bearers of a personal philosophy of photography, creating new definitions of what it means to be human in the modern era.
The Human as a Sum and Reflection of All Natural Phenomena
Kseniia Chumakova, a photographer residing in Serbia, bases her artistic method on making non-obvious connections visible. These can be connections between nature and humanity, between humans and evolution, between humans and specific species, and between humans and non-human agents. The photographer seems occupied with naming those connections that exist somewhere between intuition and the wisdom of everyday life. According to her artistic aesthetic, a person (the model) is proportionate to the entire sum of the surrounding world. A human being is a relative and bearer of information about the entire knowable universe. However, this concept also reveals a striking duality in the human condition. On one hand, humans, according to Chumakova, are aware that they are made up of the same elements that surround them; on the other hand, the presence of this awareness in the non-human material world raises questions of curiosity, if not fear. Chumakova's photographs are filled with an enchanting yet minimalist energy, resembling a puzzle or riddle; her characters are ambivalent toward both the human world and the non-human world. This creates a remarkable effect, where the artwork simultaneously serves as a statement and a critique of that statement—a rare meta-narrative quality, particularly in contemporary photography.
The Human as a Super-NPC
In Oksana Bochina's photographic style, the human is inextricably linked to the urban environment. This urban setting is both a habitat and a backdrop, a battlefield, a stage, a showcase, and everything listed above simultaneously. Bochina, who lives and works in Montenegro, perceives the human being as an element of a more complex system; however, this human does not reduce to the system or their function within it. Bochina's human is simultaneously a guest, an outsider, and a native inhabitant of the circumstances presented by the photographer. Her anthropological exploration is a captivating and vital optimistic quest for ever-new contradictory and mutually exclusive human identities. The camera, gazing from above, seems to pluck an individual from the urban flow and, together with the photographer, initiates an interactive game of multiplying meanings and identities around the captured person. This fascinating aesthetic, which is not merely a banal conceptualist attraction, allows the viewer to train their awareness of their usual perception of urban landscapes. It presents a slightly naive yet superhuman message from an artist wishing to share their benevolent vision as a method with those around them. The photographer employs dizzying photographic perspectives, vibrant dynamic colours, and a nuanced gaze from the observer's standpoint while not becoming a judge of her characters. Her works are rich in detail, inviting prolonged contemplation; although her characters may be presented as NPCs in video games, they transcend this status, offering hope that we (ordinary people) too are more than just images of ourselves.
The Human is a Puzzle That Cannot Be Solved
The artistic concept of photographer Irina Slepko Gauk is the most radical, bold, and innovative. Through her photographs, she explores the impossibility of understanding the human being. The human is a constant impossibility of approach and awareness. This position is neither nihilistic nor pessimistic; the photographer seems to postulate a form of dark realism, where one of the axioms is that the human is an absolute unknown. Her models are majestic, often shrouded in shadows, dressed in black, and enveloped in dimness. They embody the traces of real people who mourn their own kind, unable to express that a person cannot be reduced to their traces, including photographs. This is a very significant statement for the photographer, altering the disproportions of the importance of reality and its representation in photography. There is no contempt for photography here, but a bitter realisation that a captured moment is an incredibly fragile and weightless thing, incapable of deciphering the mysteries of the total “multi-layer-edness” and poly-textured nature of humanity, like an informational bomb existing in the flow of time. To amplify the effect of her photographs, the artist adds elements of conditionality and absurdity, such as a whole lemon resting on the model's head or certain traits of the subcultural photo-aesthetics of the early 21st century. The photographs of Irina Slepko Gauk are provocatively rich in meaning and technically flawless; they seem to be created to endlessly raise questions about humanity, photographic art, and the impossibility of true understanding without losing oneself.
