When you want to get to know a place, get to know its people. This seems to have been the adage of Adad Hannah, as he travelled to Saint Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in 2010. Equipped with only two cameras, he filmed and photographed ordinary Russians as they went about their daily lives. Hannah approached total strangers, asking them to pose right where they stood. He chose a wide spectrum of individuals: young adults, soldiers in uniform, young families and couples, pensioners. The result is a series of still photographs and videos titled The Russians, currently on show at Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain.
The staging is spontaneous, a freeze-frame of an ordinary day. The impromptu models sit on a park bench, lounge in a hammock, or scrape away wall paper in an old apartment. Small details provide clues to the realities of life in today’s Russia: the vintage cast iron sinks in the bathroom, the old Lada pimped up with cheap yellow headlights, the flashy plaid suit of a fashionable beau.
Hannah doesn’t stare down his subjects with the unforgiving, steely eye of documentary photographer. Rather, like a poet he captures an atmosphere, giving us a flavour of someone else’s life. His use of natural light and unaltered backdrops lend authenticity to his work, even if the subjects are posed.
Compared to Hannah’s previous video works, these “tableaux vivants” are much less controlled and tidy. His subjects often move a little, finding it hard to remain motionless, unruly teenagers even talk and giggle, as awkward teenagers are want to do. On the other hand his large scale photographs bristle with life, the intense gazes of four freshly shaved young soldiers communicating a palpable enthusiasm.
Hannah’s work straddles the border of still and motion photography, but also of documentary and romantic photography, creating an intimate, engaging portrait of Russian society.
Pierre-Françoise Ouellette Art Contemporain, space 216
Adad Hannah
The Russians
September 10 – October 22, 2011
www.pfoac.com
