Interpretations

Alexey Titarenko: Nomenklatura ofSigns
George SladeYou may want to brush up on your Russian language, idioms andsocio-cultural history before diving into the work of Alexey Titarenko.
The photographer utilizes some deeply coded symbolism in his work.
The title, for instance. Nomenklatura looks like nomenclature, and thetwo concepts are related. But they are cousins, not siblings; nuance iscritical here and throughout Titarenko’s images. (Nomenklatura ofSigns is the title of both this series and a book about the work published by Damiani in 2019.)

Shadowy, looming, undistringuishedarchitecture fills these frames. There are also
faces looking upwards, behind us, beyond thehorizon, which can be read as an optimistic
Soviet trope. Citizens are looking to the future,
though the promises and goals may be simply

Alexei Titarenko in the darkroom.

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pie in the sky.
As a New York Times reviewer described
Nomenklatura of Signs in June 2013, theseries, produced over three years in the1980s, “uses montaged Soviet insignia andarchitectural details [and] feels perfectly inkeeping with that period’s craze for semiotics
and post-structuralism.”Flash back to those heady tomes as part ofyour recommended reading, and take in a few
of the following references as well. Not to put
the “further research” cart before the horse,necessarily, but comprehending the density ofTitarenko’s influences provides backstory
essential to grasping his rich assortment ofmeanings.
For context germane to the photographer,review Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 book
The Gulag Archipelago (especially chapter 2,“The History of Our Sewage Disposal System”), Marcel Proust’s Remembrance ofThings Past, Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s threnodic poem “Babi Yar” and the stories of ThomasMann. Listen to Dmitri Shostakovich’s second
cello concerto and his 13th Symphony while
you’re at it; Babi Yar, the location outside Kyiv
(Lithuania) of a Nazi massacre of Jews, isembedded in the latter, with Yevtushenko’s
words intoned by a doleful, insistent men’schorus.
While Titarenko asserts that literature has

Meat, fish, 1988

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ity,” banal civic encouragement toward arobust Russian state. Titarenko refers to theseas “slogans of colossal dimensions.”)
Some of the most mundane street signs in
the portfolio, featuring T shapes and numbers
providing locations of storm drains, are quotidian yet trenchant analogues to the cited
Solzhenitsyn passage. When Titarenko’s photographs zoom in on them, as in Backyard
with plaques, their utilitarian notations assume
a very dark cast. A Russian never quite knew
when or where they might disappear into thesubterranean worlds of the gulag.

Leningrad-wood-paper-construction-supply-distribution forms, 1988

The net resultof all this Russian vernacularis, gratifyingly, anarrative withvisual, literary
and chronological scope.

had the most salient influence on him, he also
watched a lot of films as a young man, and“traces” from movies like Andrei Tarkovsky’s
Stalker (1979), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) and Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance (1987) have filtered into his imagery.
The last, in particular, was made concurrent
with the political zeitgeist that permeates
Titarenko’s Nomenklatura series.
The net result of all of this Russian vernacular is, gratifyingly, a narrative with visual, literary and chronological scope. There are third,
even fourth dimensions to this series. With allof these scene-setters in your head, we cannow proceed to a consideration of the photographs.
As you may have inferred, reading is criticalto these works. For those of you whose Russian or Cyrillic decoding is a bit rusty, the texts
in these images merit translation. “Observecleanliness,” for one. An ominous-looking
sign, apparently fixed to four windows andsupported by a defoliated tree, is simply anadvertisement for construction supply forms.
(Other images in the Nomenklatura series taketheir titles from signs reading: “strengthen theworld through labor” and “economize electric-46

These are layered works, both conceptually and literally. Titarenko prints through multiple negatives, creating overlaid façades thatpress meaning into a single plane. He alsouses brushed-on sepia toning to create greyyellow highlights in the photographs, a nuancethat is lost in these monochromatic reproductions.
One might formally liken the final results tothe insubstantial shallowness of the Potemkinvillage, all surface and no substance. Thissymbolism was what the photographer sought
to capture as he developed the Nomenklatura.
“Above all,” he asserts, “this series was conceived as a reflex against the stupidity andabsurdity of the Soviet regime: a personal
reaction to the strange or even supernatural
manifestations of the system.”
One unusual device Titarenko employs in
his book is the story of Simeon Petrov. The
fictional artist, described as a “miracle-working luminary” and “the outstanding creator of
the art of the Nomenclature of Signs, thesupreme artist of our province,” is profiled byan “unsightly and humble follower, who
desires to remain in obscurity.” (Also known
as Alexey Titarenko.) Apparently, Petrov was“an authoritarian leader [who] proclaims theessential esthetics of totalitarian art” and who
created all the work we see here and in thebook. The essay twists and trips on itself, utilizing language that might be called Orwellian
Newspeak in an attempt to generate an ideal
Soviet leader who was also a lifelong fighterof racial and social prejudice. Here’s a sampleof the text, in which the artist was subject tocriticism about a series of decorative panels:“Petrov easily destroyed his numbskull
opponents by pointing out that the concept of‘strictness of form’ was one he had intro-Female worker (version 4), 1987–1989

Observe cleanliness, 1987

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“Above all, thisseries was conceived as areflex against
the stupidity
and absurdity of
the Soviet
regime: a personal reaction
to the strange
or even supernatural manifestations of thesystem.”

duced himself and had modified prior toexhibiting the aforementioned panels and pictures. The hapless upstarts were dispatchedposthaste to the countryside to be given freshexplications. And the awkward incident wassoon forgotten.”Petrov seems superhuman in his qualities.
He was, in fact, considered by some as analien, or a one-time inhabitant of “anotherdimension.” He embodies the dense contradictions of Russian life, and Titarenko’s
account masterfully summons the paradoxical
quality of Russian leadership. There are somany mixed messages in the text, so many
nuances to the narrative. “Discussions
reached a pitch of such bitter intensity and sodivided our small society that legions of specialists from all different fields of knowledge
were drawn into studying the matter.” Imagine art having this potential!
We commonly understand nomenclature
as a system of specialized signs and symbols.
Nomenklatura is a Soviet phenomenon
addressing what in American culture of the1960s might be referred to as “the Establishment”—that is, the power brokers and gate-

One mask, two faces, 1986–1988

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keepers who influence decision-making andsocio-economic ascendancy. As Jean-JacquesMarie states in one of the book’s essays, thenomenklatura was a “gigantic bureaucraticlayer of parasites, thieves, corrupt people, andcharlatans busy trying to pull the wool overeveryone's eyes.”This is older work, made in a time in which
Russia was on the brink of becoming a global
power. Titarenko acknowledges that the work
had to change as the Soviet Union broke intopieces.
“When the Soviet Union began collapsing,then everything changed, of course, including
the way I was making art. The basis of myworld changed, and my art had to change aswell. I finished using Soviet symbolism withthe fall of the Soviet Union.”
When Titarenko was younger, a Leningradbased photography club called Zerkalo (Mirror)
was the place where the artist becameacquainted with older photographers and ahost of other creatives. Titarenko joined theclub in 1978 and began to move away fromtraditional straight photography. Zerkalo also
became the setting in which Titarenko had his
first brushes with Russia’s repressive totalitarian state; he eventually served time in prison
and was fortunate that his mandatory military
service commuted his sentence.
With time, his hometown evolved into acity with increasingly darker backgrounds. “Bythe mid-1990s,” the photographer states, “St.
Petersburg was perceived more as a capital oforganized crime than as a cultural center. I
was depleted and disappointed.” He developed what he refers to as a “survival instinct,”a compulsion “to search for things that could
bring some sort of moral respite, if onlybriefly.” Towards the end of the 1990s, thenational currency collapsed. “The ruble
became mere paper in just a few days.” Thesigns were gelling; it was time to decamp.
After having been a regular visitor to New
York City since 2000, Titarenko took up residence in the city in 2008; he now lives inHarlem. In contrast to his years in St. Petersburg, New York feels like a “happy city,” andhis professional life has revolved around Nailya
Alexander Gallery, which represents him andhas served as a meeting place for artists, critics and curators—his 21st century Zerkalo/Mirror hub.
New York has echoes of his hometown.

Irina Ivanova Patseva, senior storekeeper, 198649instagram.com/alexey_titarenko_photo.
Titarenko’s other books include The City is a
Novel (Damiani, 2015), Alexey Titarenko: Photographs (Nailya Alexander, 2003), City ofShadows (ART TEMA, 2001), Alexei Titarenko(Galerie Municipale du Chateau d’Eau, 2000),
and Black and White Magic of St. Petersburg(Soros Center for Contemporary Art, 1996).
Our thanks to Nailya Alexander Gallery in New
York (nailyaalexandergallery.com) for theirassistance in producing this feature.

Windows with discus thrower, 1986–1988“When theSoviet Union
began collapsing, then everything changed,of course,
including theway I was making art.”“My studio is on the ground floor, windows
facing the street, the sidewalk. I see more of‘real life’ of New York, the life that you don’t
see in the media, a bit of a mix of everything.
But on the other side Harlem is extremely
beautiful, and its 19th and early 20th century
buildings and churches, along with ordinary,very nice and cheerful people living here (wealways say ‘good morning’), remind me of St.
Petersburg. Sunrises in Harlem especially during winter are really amazing!”
Titarenko describes a perfect day as one
during which “I’m able to create something
beautiful, either during the work in my studio/darkroom or while taking pictures on thestreet.” Thoughts of waste-disposal systems,
military service and potential imprisonment
must be pretty far from his mind these days.
Well, at least the last two.
Addendum
Images copyright Alexey Titarenko. You canview examples from his numerous bodies ofwork at alexeytitarenko.com and50

Backyard with plaques, 1986

Male worker (version 4), 1987–1989

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