Points of attraction: Anna Golubovska's photo exhibition opened in Odesa

On May 8, the Museum of Western and Oriental Art opened an exhibition of analog photographs by Anna Holubovska titled "Points of Attraction" (2022-2025).

An Intent correspondent attended the opening.

Located in four large halls, the exhibition presents a selection of 78 black and white photographs, the result of research conducted by the photographer since the beginning of the war.
The curator of the exhibition, Eugenio Alberti Schatz, notes that it is a visual story about the spirit of a city that does not lose its calm and awareness of its cultural status.

"In the photographs we see the intellectual life of the city, the life of animals, some individual details. Not all the works are the same. There is something mysterious, mysterious in them. Photography in general helps to understand many moments of our life," he notes.

The works were taken on film with an old Nikon F3 camera and printed by hand with silver salts in a format of 30x40 cm, with some exceptions.

The exhibition is organized into 11 thematic islands: One-on-One, White, Courage, Messengers, Loss, Support, Celebration, Fate, Talent, Dance of Life, and Expectation. Each section begins with the main photo, which is defined as a "point of attraction" because of its ability to influence the perception of other images in the section.

The subject matter ranges from urban and architectural landscapes to natural open spaces, from portraits of residents in their homes and on the street to animals such as cats, dogs, horses and birds, from images of the destruction caused by bombings to moments of simple everyday life or related to the display of talents such as circus, theater, tango and music.

Anna Golubovska notes that some of the photographs presented were included in the Italian project Qui Odesa - Chronicles of a Breathtaking City. This is a story of text and images written in collaboration with Eugenio Alberti Schatz. This story was published in the Italian online newspaper doppiozero.com and then became an exhibition at the Fondazione Stelline in Milan in July 2022.

The exhibition in Odesa features a video created for the occasion, lasting over 8 minutes, with a selection of about 100 photographs by Anna Holubovska, texts by Eugenio Alberti Schatz and original music by composer Steve Piccolo.

"I used to think that this would be a good ending to my work with Eugenio Alberti," says Anna Holubovska about this exhibition. - " The war will end. I will start working in color. But now I realize that nothing ends, and everything goes to the next round."

It should be noted that Golubovska works with the Italian Galleria Paola Colombari, with whom she has been regularly participating in the international exhibition Mia Photo Fair BNP Paribas in Milan since 2022.

Art gallerist Paola Colombari, who came to the exhibition, emotionally noted at the opening that Odesa is a magical city: "This is the energy of beauty. And I immediately felt that Anna was the point of attraction."

Photo: Intent/Nata Chernetska.

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