Vladimir Orlov - in the position of an internal photo monitor

The postmodern culture of the last decades could not help but cast its light on the perception of the urban environment - both by a professional and by a “man from the street”. In particular, this can be traced to the material of the evolution of urban photography: to the academically serious photofixation, reportage photography “offhand” and a nostalgicly colored photo-journalist are added ironic, and sometimes - permuscular photos. Mayakovsky Square. 2004 Photo Building Leninsky Prospekt. Photo of 2002. However, the carnivalization of consciousness is not the only prerequisite for the spread of the “Gag” view of the city and the metamorphoses it undergoes. There are also objective circumstances related to the injection of contrast, the antinomy of the urban environment - especially the modern metropolis, where the incompatible gets along side by side: extravagant architectural gestures and “mass-type” architectural monuments and consumerist consumer goods, corporate-privatized urban spaces and mass-produced Domesticated territories, natural-artificial landscape inclusions and deprived areas of urban slums, which are overwhelmingly monumental in scale. sculpture and unruly advertising. Gagarin Square. View from the Third Ring Road. 2002 photo. For Moscow, where sacred and profane, high and low, personal and alien, are mixed in the historical whirl of the multi-temporal strata, sacred and profane, this is especially characteristic. The building of the library library them. Lenin - through the fence of the food court. Photo of 2000 V.Orlov is not the first time among the guests of our magazine - as an architect and as a photographer. This time, for the “ArchiGag” column, we selected both his famous and new photographs, in which a good-natured smile often gives way to a sarcastic grin. However, the author never passes the line separating the internal and external observer.
It is curious that the indirect criticism contained in his photographic plots happens to achieve the goal - so the building that was occupied by the Licensing Center of Gosstroy in Zaryadye, has already taken on a more handsome look ... The licensed center of Gosstroy of the Russian Federation in Zaryadye. Photo 2001

Magazine: Architectural Gazette