Poetics of the locality
Photographs by Vladimir Kurashov
Poem by Colum McCann
We were older and we wept.
It was not a weeping of surrender.
It was a weeping of awareness.
And time was moving inside time:
the time that was, and the time that is,
and the time that is still yet to come.
The younger ones stood behind us.
Given to their early weathers,
they too had bent a little to the idea of time. But soon enough they straightened
and graced the seasons.
They were native unto this.
They gathered.
Even that which was forced to stand apart, came together.
And the line between that which was,
and that which is, and that which will be, allowed us to recognize the dark.
About Vladimir Kurashov
Vladimir Kurashov was born in Moscow, Russia. After surviving an attack Kurashov received a severe injury to his left eye. Following several surgeries he never fully recovered his sight in that eye. Soon after, Kurashov discovered photography as a form of therapy that compensates him both physically and psychologically.
Short Film about Kurashov
To purchase Vladimir’s prints contact: @volodyakurashov
About Colum McCann
Colum McCann is a novelist from Dublin, Ireland now living in New York. McCann has written seven novels, including TransAtlantic and the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin. His work has been translated in 35 languages and has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Paris Review, among other publications.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Poetics of the Locality is a series of landscape photographs made during the winters of 2009-2012 within the “garden-park” area of Moscow and the surrounding region. They were made to offer a poetic vision of the familiar.
Kurashov sought out these unexpected and calming scenes within the rapidly developing suburbia of Moscow. Among the noise of commuter trains, sleepy satellite towns, bustling construction warehouses and markets, dacha and cottage villages, one can discover the beauty and power of nature. Raw and untended, Poetics of the Locality dwells in eternal peace and silence, each frame depicting the process, interaction of nature: evergreen trees with the broad-leafed trees, fields with forests, light with darkness.
Poetics of the Locality depicts the escape of an urbanite into nature's bosom, nature being an object of infinite reflection and contemplation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
This work is an excerpt of the chapter “Event Horizon” from my book The Moscow Cycle, where I assemble my work from the past decade into a visual narrative in a multi-volume collection. Illustrating my evolution as an artist, the work spans different approaches and technical methods.
I believe that a cycle — “a circle” — is a symbol of life, on earth and in the universe. A cycle can have vectors pointing in any direction, 360 degrees around, and we, as humans, choose the direction ourselves. Moscow has a circular and irregular urban layout. As a Moscovite, I am used to walking in circles, treading along the radius and diagonals of these chords.
The cycle brings life into motion, into development and dynamics. The feeling I get from existing in this cycle is what drove me to embark on my eternal search. It is the compass by which I navigate my life. In this environment there is a paradoxical sense of immobility and immersion into the depths of routine that, like a whirlwind, may seem infinite.