Sergey Loye / Others

Curator: Nina Levitina

Collection of the artist, Omsk

Presented by the Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

Sergei Loye, thirty-six, is a theatre designer and also a photographer who has taken pictures for the 5th Drama Theatre in Omsk and the Harlequin Puppet Theatre.

The’Others’ series marks the artist’s debut as professional photographer, and also as director. A doorjamb amid the Russian plains is Loye’s only décor, the starting point from which he forms the subject and dynamics of each shot. At first there is just a field with an open door to the sky, like a closed theatre curtain, then the show begins: entry of a man in a hat carrying an accordion, followed by the appearance of a girl in the doorway...

Children in the drab empty room of a children’s home — frozen not in a pose, but a performance: these little’role-playing actors’ present their own drama in front of the camera and create their own installations with simple props — kettles, balls, books and cubes.

But these photographs by Loye bear no relation to still life, they are more like a documentation of theatre miniatures or performances — unexpected, spontaneous and vivid.