Publications RP Archive - Сторінка 73 з 199

«Якісь загальнолюдські проблеми нікуди не зникають через те, що магазини інші і зарплатня інша. Одна дуже хороша оператор сказала мені: "Ти знімаєш захід як схід, а схід як захід". У чомусь вона була права. В першій моїй книжці "Стереотип" — впереміш Харків, Париж, Лондон, Стокгольм»

Старостенко, Сергій. «Мода Європи на Україну ґрунтувалася на страху» — фотограф Михайло Педан [Електроний документ] / Сергій Старостенко. — Режим доступу: https://gazeta.ua/articles/life/_moda-evropi-na-ukrayinu-gruntuvalasya-na-strahu-fotograf-mihajlo-pedan/743888

«A book like a masterfully performed classical piece. As a matter of fact, the refined rationality of following the rules of the photobook is what makes this edition on Venetian paper and in wonderful print that elegant. An émigré from the Soviet Union, Pedan finally published his first album 20 years after he’d become a well-known photography teacher in Sweden. Just as he shaped his emigration, his whole bookis a conscious return back, and a look forward, consisting of duplications and relished moments and the world’s irregularities. It has travel photographs mixed with types of compositional constructions, light, geometry, visual motifs — no longer signed — which present precise images of Western and Eastern Europe. And among these accurate rows are hidden blends — ‘East-like’ images of Germany and Sweden, ‘Westlikes’ from Russia. Only the virtuous performer can afford to violate narrative logic this much, since he has all the clues in his hands»

«Twilight has been criticized as a norm for a few decades now. But in Misha Pedan's book stereo_typ you actually understand the joke of having a "you" by his side. Pedan's monochrome and pastel-colored photographs were shown a few years ago in an exhibition on Gallery Icon, and appear here in duets, two and two on each lookup. Hand in hand like love couples. Each slide duo is taken in one place, from Grythyttan to Minsk, and is cut by black lines. Only the preface, written by author Mara Lee violates the dualism: it is translated into three languages, except Swedish even English and Russian. Sometimes the photos take minutes after each other - like the pictures from Gothenburg, where the sunlight slowly moves over a green sofa. In other cases there is an eternity between a train car in Vitrysk Vitebsk, full of winter fur and caps, and the image next to, perhaps taken through a window, of a flock overlaid the Soviet gubb monument. It's a form that violates the idea that photography alone will capture the magic moment, the Kodak moment. Here things happen in joints, distances and relationships. Time is not still It has only been found to exist. I'm excited to keep that one picture first, then get an aha experience when it's changing, grows, with its other side»

Kazimerska, Natalia. Natalia Kazmierska om skarvarna, avstånden och relationerna i Misha Pedans bok "stereo_typ" [Electronic document] / Natalia Kazmierska.–Access mode: http://www.sfoto.se/f/recensioner/misha-pedanstereotyp

«Misha Pedan‘s “The End of La Belle Epoque” offers us a remarkable testimony of life in Ukraine, during the last few years of the era of socialism. The design of the book itself is quiet classical and gives it a solid feeling like the feeling of a traditional (pre-digital) family album. What makes its design extraordinary, is the way it is enveloped in a cardboard file, reminiscent of the burocratic files in which the Soviet regime contained the lifes of all its subjects. But, the real thing about “The End of La Belle Epoque” is the extraordinary way in which these subjects of the CCCP have been portrayed. We could learn a lot about this portrayal in an insightful essay by Irina Sandomirskaia that accompanies the book. Irina Sandomirskaia notices that the pictures in “The End of La Belle Epoque” were made while the USSR was collapsing, while the empire’s grand aspirations, its striving after a brilliant future, its militant spirit of class struggle, had already long retreated from daily life. The social landscape was irreversibly decaying and evaporating. Most Westerners did not know it yet, but “the Reds” had relaxed their iron muscles on their own people for good. And, what were the subjects of Misha Pedan up to in this end-of-times context? Sandomirskaia observes that they are surrendering themselves to a dolce far niente, to a sweet idleness of doing nothing. They seem not to hold themselves any longer accountable for or attached to anything. There is a sense of quiet contentment ruling. Misha Pedan’s heroes are giving themselves to those modest enjoyments which their grand epoch used to forbid them and which the time of stagnation is offering in abundance. Sandomirskaia than lucidly outlines that Pedan’s heroes embody a soft kind of anarchism. She describes this anarchism as the subversive power of leading one’s life as a modest feast – a life that “has disentagled itself from the clutch of the historic law”. The Soviet regime was, according to her, completely powerless towards this bum like attitude of its subjects. She relates the powerlessness of the Kremlin towards Pedan’s heroes (or bums) to the powerlessness of the polis of Athens towards Diogenes, who was only looking for some bodily pleasures on the agora. Pedan’s heroes are not traumatised by the catastrophe of the downfall of the USSR nor excited by the hot and revengeful spurs of the liberal revolution. We believe that Pedan’s focus “on a festive mood laced with a slight hangover in an unpretentious enjoyment of the present” is truly something unique. It would have been far less surprising to our eyes to see only the miserable, grey and frustrated faces of a generation that has bitterly lost the cold war. But, Pedan’s focus also raises another and maybe a more important question. Where are the Ukrainians standing now? After 25 years of exposure to neo-liberal temptations from the EU and after the raise to power of Russian oligarchs, who are even more cynically neo-liberal, it seems that the Ukrainians could not keep the spirit of soft anarchism. Lenin was downed in Pedan’s hometown last week! Today, we are witnessing violence, riotting, destruction and even war. Could it be that the current rulers, whoever and wherever they may be, have learned their lesson and have closed all spaces for soft and wise subversives like Diogenes? We will not answer the question yet but, in a next post, we will come back to Misha Pedan’s noble bums and the anarchistic poetics by which he has portrayed them!»

Nollet, David. Life of a bum and The End of La Belle Epoque [Electronic document] / David Nollet. — Access mode: http://www.cape.ag/?p=184

Сандомирская, Ирина. Конец прекрасной эпохи [Электронный документ] / И. Сандомирская. — Режим доступа: https://pedan.info/books/the-end-of-la-belle-epoque/text.html

«Endings carry a certain weight – a call to reflect, and the knowledge that something different is about to begin. The End of La Belle Epoque, a new book from Ukrainian photographer Misha Pedan, transports us to Soviet Russia between the years 1986 and 1989, the precipice of the collapse of the Union. Before even opening the book, the title provokes our loyalties and values – by bestowing the label of a ‘beautiful era’ to this period of time so directly, it becomes unclear and arguable whether Pedan means the beauty as genuine or ironic. The accompanying text acknowledges the duality in perception: “The fall of the Soviet regime, according to one perspective, is the central revolutionary event of our time; according to another, it represents its greatest geopolitical catastrophe.” And so we dive in. With Pedan as our guide, we walk the Soviet streets in 92 black and white images, catching sight of a small babushka in headscarf carrying a bucket, then horsing around with a group of construction workers as they break from digging up a sidewalk to have an ice cream, and later being ignored by a man and woman as they sit on a ledge sharing slugs off a glass bottle. Taken mostly in Kharkiv, the images also show scenes from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa and Poltava - though the locations are not readily distinguisable from each other. In many images, we see scenes and fashion that are quintessentially Soviet Russian – for outsiders, icons that offer a clear demarcation of exoticism, like the Russian fur hat and the concrete jungles of communist block housing. Other images portray symbols of the ‘80s that are more connected to Western pop culture - like young women with feathered hair and stone-washed jeans - delivering a firm sense of the transition afoot. Though nostalgia is somewhat inherently driven by the experiences of one’s own culture, the book manages to express a more generalised notion of nostalgia well. Displaying the images with the film’s black borders left intact, capturing small moments of interaction in the street and collecting a certain amount of relaxed joie de vivre in the people he encounters, Pedan shows us something of a sweet life that we might not have experienced, but we would have liked to see. The book itself, lined with a kitsch pattern of illustrated men rowing through geometric blue waters, not to mention the vibrant red coloured edges of the book, draws us into the emotion of the place and time. Enclosed in a thin cardboard slip-case, titles printed in Russian and English, and sealed with a small cloth ribbon, the book’s craftsmanship and attention to detail is also reminiscent of times gone by. It’s a welcome and precious object. Of course, like all nostalgia, the bad bits are omitted or seen through eyes obstructed with fondness; essentially, we're looking through the rose-coloured glasses of a Ukrainian who has been based in Sweden since 1990. Like images showing an idyllic childhood, we know there are many things left out, or scenes which take on a new interpretation in hindsight. Though there are images of soldiers, images of children playing on tanks, and the infamous grocery queues, there's lightness rather than weight. As an outsider to this experience, this is not the Soviet Russia of the ‘80s that you might think of, but perhaps for this reason, it’s worth taking a stroll along the street with Misha Pedan in the midst of the beautiful era»

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