Ueno tube station (c) Guergui Pinkhassov
Magnum’s newsletter this week featured this image by Gueorgiu Pinkhassov. After being overwhelmed by photos over the past year and a half, it is becoming rarer and rarer to find one that really strikes emotion. This image, I almost don’t care what it is about; the bright pastels, the cinematic feel… I love it and want it on my wall.
There is not much written about Gueorgiu, he seems to be slightly overlooked compared to other Magnum photographers. But I found this beautifully written analysis of his work by one CD Thacker, responding to a lively debate on photo.net in April 2004:
In my view Pinkhassov’s approach to photography is that of the true filmmaker: deeply personal and particularly cinematic. He brings a wide sweep to the small format. His pictures are for me like frames from an immense film, one which comes from a singular, intense vision of the world about us and the world within. Perhaps one of his closest aesthetic contemporaries is Fellini. But whereas much of the fun of Fellini lies in the surreality and absurdity of the real, Pinkhassov has much more in common with another grand auteur, Tarkovsky, from whom he obviously took much. Here is a quote from Tarkovsky that sounds like a prescription for a book like Pinkhassov’s Sightwalk.
“The image is tied to the concrete and the material, yet reaches out along mysterious paths to regions beyond the spirit…”
The new metro (c) Gueorgui Pinkhassov
Car park at shopping mall (c) Gueorgui Pinkhassov
- London, UK, 4 degrees Celsius on a cool, clear early evening, listening to Dave Matthews’ “Crash into me” (nostalgia today)
