NYAB Event - Anton Kratochvil "Moscow Nights"

Anton Kratochvil "Moscow Nights"

Leica Gallery in New York

This event has ended.

Antonin Kratochvil, whose work has been published in such award-winning monographs as Broken Dream, Incognito, and Sopravvivere, is one of the most respected and hard-hitting photojournalists of our time. Among his many awards are: ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism (1994), Leica Medal of Ex-cellence (1994), Ernst Haas Award (1995), World Press Photo Award (1999), Hasselblad Award (2000), Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005).

Moscow Nights transforms Kratochvil's intense and no-nonsense photojournalism into a sphere of decadent sensuality whereby the photographs mutate into something much greater than a visual journalistic essay. The images need no textual explanations to be understood and deeply felt; they instantly transport the viewer into the dark, dingy, Soviet-era concrete surroundings of the clubs - a salacious, circus-like amalgam of nudity, lust and raw sexual-ity. These startling photographs, which balance garish metallic colors with near darkness, are enhanced by Kratochvil's well-known stylistic geometry - irregular angles, skewered views, with the sexes so enmeshed as to make it sometimes difficult to differentiate between the bodies. We are more than amazed by the crush of performers, participants and onlookers; and we are touched by the lonely, drugged, almost hollow emptiness lurking beneath the external atmosphere of fervent sexuality. The dichotomy between the public and private aspects of this sexual madness holds our attention and engenders in us a catharsis of fear, pity and emotion. In the end, we feel a transformative purification by the ultimate knowledge that no matter how much and how well Kratochvil has baptized us into his Russian nightclub inferno, we have emerged unscathed and without personal loss.

Moscow Nights is Kratochvil's third exhibition of his work at Leica Gallery in association with the Czech Center New York. The first was his participation in 2002 in Czech Documentary Photography curated by Vladimír Birgus , followed by a solo show, Czech Photography V - Antonin Kratochvil, in 2004. The photographer is one of the founding members of the VII photo agency and continues to be based out of New York and Prague.