Oscillating between intimate and documentary photographs from the series Belarus Back express the unknown with great accuracy and a sense of shame felt by Kirill Smolyakov exile, Belarusian young photographer living in the United States in recent years.
"I could not return to Belarus for three years. I was a man without a country and without family. I felt like I had lost my roots ... Last summer I returned home and I realized I do not belong to her more, I returned to the unknown ... "
" I photographed people and places that I are both close but at the same time so distant today "Kirill
Smolyakov
portraits of young just emerging from adolescence, still lifes, scenes of everyday ... Simple, without dramatic, almost innocuous at first, but turning out to any carrier that distance traveled by Kirill Smolyakov.
A vision of these young people entered into the banality of their everyday, Larry Clarke comes with too much evidence in mind: a young couple lying naked in bed after making love, plunged in semi-darkness, and then another couple sitting in the backseat of a car ... even childish pouts
Same, same pale faces marked and have already experienced too.
But soon, that impression fades and gives way to melancholy, a je ne sais quoi of elegiac. Kirill Smolyakov is a look of infinite tenderness on his characters. The choice to use color plays down these portraits.
couples seem to be absent from one to the other despite the physical proximity. All eyes are elsewhere, do not intersect, is almost flee.
"Tea Break" In "Tea Break" for example, the boy smokes a cigarette leaning against a window on campaign. His gaze wanders off. A girl passes him a cup in hand. Both eyes, their two bodies disagree.
The boy is already gone. His thoughts turned to the window on an off-field might be hope for a life elsewhere, the United States? The girl is cons-day, already a memory, it does not retain.
With "Kremlevy, a boy, shirtless, holds him tight against a girl in the back of a car. She wears a jacket too big for her. That of the boy? While huddled against each other, each is in his world, their eyes are lost once again to point out immediately in front of them. Here, unlike the "tea break", no opening to the outside.
These two photographs are answered, on one side, an opening - the window - and separation from each other, an embracing couple, but a closed world. "Kremlevy" prefigures the separation that seems to actual "Tea Break"
The intimate relationship with the subjects of these photographs is expressed by the close proximity Smolyakov that Kirill has with them. A
physical proximity, in "Tea Break", the photographer is inside the room in "Kremlevy, this is called the" place of death "it occupies.
A close relationship: friends, family? the question remains open. This close relationship also explains the relative indifference of the subjects to the photographer. This relative indifference
also creates a distancing between the photographer and his subjects. Smolyakov between Kirill and his country.
Is it her own teens not so long ago that seeks to stage the photographer? A not so distant youth: Kirill Smolyakov was born in 1983.
"Fish" still lifes, they, refer to the daily, smoked fish, beer, black bread, milk. Children's meals, simple things, rustic. These foods are highlighted by the choice of depth of field, or transpire almost nothing of what's around. No sooner does one imagine a kitchen in one. These still lifes
also refer to feelings of lost youth, the smells of coffee, meals, family ... Functions as reminiscences ... As the remains distant memory ...
"Last summer, I returned home, and I realized I did not belong Also, I came back into the unknown. Now I realize that this is all part of my choice "
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