«Московский сюр» Михаила Дашевского

Abstract

In the article, the researcher analyzed the photographic heritage of the Moscow photographer M.A. Dashevsky presented in the book Native Retro. 1962–2002. Photo Saga (2020) through the prism of surrealist aesthetics, and draws parallels between his works and the works of foreign photographers connected with this art movement. Despite the fact that in Russia, surrealism as a separate trend was not fully represented, it is possible to reveal the elements close to its conceptual program in various types of Russian art of the 20th century. In his photographs, M.A. Dashevsky offered the author’s version of “surrealism” or, more precisely, a particular “Moscow surrealism”. It was formed in the context of both the photographer’s own poetics and the specifics of the development of Russian photography in general. Like many works by surrealist photographers, Dashevsky’s photographs can be read both as an authentic story about his era and as its subjective interpretation. The researcher reveals parallels between historical photographic surrealism and the works of Dashevsky at the levels of the choice of motives, conceptions and artistic techniques. Their common motives and themes include interest in monuments, mannequins, shop windows, cafes, antique shops, flea markets, images of picturesque destruction, and absurd situations. Among their general strategies it is important to mention the search for “paradoxical juxtapositions” generated by reality itself, the choice of an unusual angle of shooting, the work with inscriptions in the urban space, and the involvement of the viewer’s associative thinking. Dialectics of the real and the phantom, internal and external, public and private, which is close to surrealist aesthetics, endows the works of M.A. Dashevsky with semantic versatility. The photographer also actively uses the strategy of one reality penetrating into another, generating surreality, which is developed in his photographs of “glass life” and “overlays”. An integral part of the works by M.A. Dashevsky is the author’s humor — kind and lyrical or close to surrealistic black humor.