Not on display

Anabiosis: Fishermen Plants

Photograph
2000 (photographed)
Artist/Maker
Chernysheva, Olga (photographer)
Place of origin
Moscow (photographed)

Olga Cherysheva's (Russian, b. 1962) series of mutely toned photographs entitled Anabiosis: Fishermen Plants (2000), singles out of the snow-covered ice, solitary Russian fishermen wrapped in fabrics to protect themselves against the freezing cold. They are recognisable as human figures from her citation in the title and, as the title also suggests, are returned to life through the photographs, transformed into shoots of plants breaking through the deathly ice. Chernysheva has created series of street photographs in the late 1990s and early 2000s that single out observations that become increasingly surreal motifs as the series numbers increase.

Object details

Category
Photographs
Object type
Photograph
TitleAnabiosis: Fishermen Plants (series title)
Materials and techniques
Gelatin-silver print
Brief description
Photograph, from 'Anabiosis: Fishermen Plants' series, by Olga Cherysheva, 2000
Physical description
Black and white photograph of a plant wrapped in hessian near Red Square, Moscow.
Dimensions
  • Height: 78.8cm
  • Width: 53.9cm
Marks and inscriptions
(Signed and dated by artist on verso.)
Gallery label
(22/10/2016)
These images depict a solitary Moscow fisherman swathed in plastic against the freezing cold [left] and a plant near Red Square wrapped up in hessian sacking to protect it from the frost (right). Anabiosis is a state of suspended animation into which some animals go during extreme conditions, reviving later. This may be read as a metaphor for looking forward to a thaw in artistic freedom.
(07/10/2004)
Olga Chernysheva (born Moscow 1962)
Untitled from the series Anabiosis: Fishermen-Plants
2000

These photographs come from a series entitled Anabiosis, meaning a state of suspended animation. They show the nearly indistinguishable shapes of a solitary Muscovite fisherman [left] and a plant [right] wrapped up in protection from the freezing cold near Red Square. Chernysheva's juxtaposition of these images heightens her portrayal of what a critic has described as "the diffuse area of life between the struggle for survival and forms of recreation and pleasure, so often found in an extreme climate such as Russia's".

Gelatin-silver print

Purchased from the Sir Cecil Beaton Fund 2004
Museum no. E.3555, 3556-2004
(2008-2009)
On the snow-covered ice, a solitary Russian fisherman sits wrapped in fabrics and plastic to protect himself against the freezing cold. Similarly, a tree, uncannily human in outline, is covered to preserve it through the ravages of winter. Both must be deciphered before the forms begins to appear from the layers enshrouding them. These images come from a series entitled Anabiosis, meaning a return to life after apparent death. Chernysheva's photographs revive the fisherman and the plant, if only through our vague perception of their shape.
Credit line
Given by the artist 2004
Summary
Olga Cherysheva's (Russian, b. 1962) series of mutely toned photographs entitled Anabiosis: Fishermen Plants (2000), singles out of the snow-covered ice, solitary Russian fishermen wrapped in fabrics to protect themselves against the freezing cold. They are recognisable as human figures from her citation in the title and, as the title also suggests, are returned to life through the photographs, transformed into shoots of plants breaking through the deathly ice. Chernysheva has created series of street photographs in the late 1990s and early 2000s that single out observations that become increasingly surreal motifs as the series numbers increase.
Associated object
E.3555-2004
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.3556-2004

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Record createdJuly 19, 2004
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O101682/anabiosis-fishermen-plants-photograph-chernysheva-olga/
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