Urban Poetry: St. Petersburg – New York

Please join us for an opening reception for the exhibit “Urban Poetry: St. Petersburg – New York.” with photography by Mark Serman.

Exhibit on display October 19, 2016 – December 16, 2016, Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.

This show features an abridged collection of the photography of Mark Serman, with works spanning from his birthplace of Leningrad, U.S.S.R. to New York City, where he settled after his forced emigration in 1977. These works do not seek to express the usual elements of an émigré’s story such as the passage of time or travel through lands and social strata. In these photographs, there is no story at all, but rather reflections, impressions and allusions, felt and perceived only by the author himself. If this exhibit were not an exhibit, but a book, it would be an anthology of poems or songs in an obscure language understood in its entirety by very few. As it is, the exhibit is pictorial, visual, and minimalist in the extreme. In the visual medium of photography, its statement is universal and, we hope, well understood by all. Mark Serman’s work is about experiencing firsthand the poetic fusion between architecture and reality, which produces an immensely inspiring effect on the photographer. The results are exhibited as an act of sharing this experience.

The vintage images of the Hermitage museum and the Winter Palace were created the traditional way: silver negatives printed onto black and white fiber based silver-halide paper with consequent toning in selenium toner. Some images of old Leningrad were digitally scanned and printed on chromogenic archival paper. The images of New York were created partially in analog color negative film and partially in a digital file form, and all were printed using an archival chromogenic process.

From the Harriman Institute