Публікації

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»

Matthews, Katherine Oktober. The End of La Belle Epoque [Electronic document] / Katherine Oktober Matthews. — Access mode: http://www.gupmagazine.com/books/misha-pedan/the-end-of-la-belle-epoque

«"Кінець прекрасної епохи" — це своєрідне повернення в радянські часи, при тому що моє покоління долучилося до розпаду Радянського Союзу і цій події ми, природно, зраділи. Але, переглядаючи старі негативи, я відчув не просто ностальгію за місцем і часом, а сам час, який був дуже плідним для митця. Тоді, якщо ти щось робив, то винятково для себе. Це певною мірою кінець моєї епохи. Не знаю тільки, чи всіх це стосується»

Фотограф Михайло Педан: «Перехід до цивілізованого життя потягне за собою і процес нормалізації культури» [Електронний документ]. — Режим доступу: http://old.gazeta.dt.ua/article/print/CULTURE/fotograf-mihaylo-pedan-perehid-do-civilizovanogo-zhittya-potyagne-za-soboyu-i-proces-normalizaciyi-kulturi-_.html

«M is a book of photographs made by Misha Pedan from 1985-1986, taken during his lengthy daily subway commute in Karkov, Ukraine. M opens with an introduction by Vagrich Bakhjhanyan that immediately sets an unusual tone for the book: it is not the traditional introductory essay intended to shed light on the photographs and the artist who made them. Pedan’s photographs are not mentioned at all. Instead the piece is a fantastic account of the city of Karkov, so far removed from reality that it becomes more of a poem or piece of short fiction than an academically useful window into the pictures. Its fanciful nature calls into question the veracity of the photographs to come. The eighty exquisitely reproduced photographs following Bakhjhanyan’s essay are all made in the confined space of a subway car. Although it is not stated anywhere in the book, the subjects appear unaware they are being photographed, so it seems safe to conclude Pedan’s camera was hidden from view. Whether this was an effort to get truly candid shots or a consequence of the political reality of Soviet-era Ukraine is unclear. What is clear is that he was able to capture some remarkable images of his fellow travelers. Whether through a technical or aesthetic requirement, Pedan has used long shutter speeds, which introduces significant motion blur to the images. This creates a real sense of energy and movement on the Ukrainian subway. The people are alive and moving, the train car is shaking, the scene out the window is clear or distorted — these are not frozen fractions of a second for studying, there is a visceral sense that the viewer is bouncing along with the passengers. Throughout the book, many of the facing pages are diptychs of the same scene, made with two different exposures. On the left panel two out of four people will be blurry from motion; on the right panel three are frozen in place, while one individual glances around. This convention sets up a cinematic progression of time and movement through the subway cars. American audiences will immediately think of Walker Evans’ body of similar work made in the late 1930s, Many Are Called, which was published in 1966 and republished in 2004. Although both works share the formal conceit of the hidden camera recording anonymous photographs of passengers on a subway, that is where the similarities end. Evans was interested in showing what riding the subway looked like while Pedan shows what it felt like. It’s unclear whether Pedan was aware of Evan’s work in 1985, and there is no information in M to indicate Many Are Called made it through the Iron Curtain. But there is a visual cue towards the end of M that may indicate Pedan was aware of Evans’s work when he sequenced these images for publication: the accordion player. Pedan dedicates six pages, more than any other subject, to increasingly blurry images of a man seated between two women playing an accordion. It is easy to see this as a tip-of-the-hat to Evans’ earlier image of a subway accordionist, and therefore the larger similarities of the two bodies of work. M is an engaging book that appeals to multiple spheres of the photography world. Formalists will appreciate the aesthetics of the images, the play of light and dark, blur and focus, while ethnographers will be engaged by the character, dress, and bearing of the residents of Soviet era Karkov. Although it certainly stands on its own, it also is a worthy companion to Many Are Called»

Ondrik D. Book Review: M [Electronic document] / David Ondrik. - Access mode: http://blog.photoeye.com/2015/10/book-review-m.html

Kharkiv School of Photography: From Soviet Censorship to New Aesthetics 1970 - 2015 [Catalogue of virtual exhibition] / Edit. Igor Manko, Roberto Muffoletto. – VASA, 2015. – 67 с.

Чужа, Юля. Миша Педан: «Брать и спокойно давать другим — это логика работы в искусстве» [Электронный документ] / Юля Чужа. — Режим доступа: https://birdinflight.com/ru/vdohnovenie/opyt/misha-pedan-brat-spokojno-davat-drugim-eto-logika-raboty-v-iskusstve.html

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