CL, Photographer Contemplates a “Lost Vanguard”

Below is an excerpt of a review from the Creative Loafing.
To read the entire review please access the the Creative Loafing web site.

DATE: April 16, 2009
PUBLICATION: Creative Loafing
BYLINE: Jeremy Abernathy
TITLE: Photographer Contemplates a Lost Vanguard at Lumière

EXHIBITION : “Richard Pare – The Lost Vanguard”

Richard Pare became enamored with modernism at an early age. The son of an artist and teacher, Pare studied graphic design and photography in the U.K. before earning his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his 15 years at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, he amassed a sizable collection of architectural photography and, in the process, solidified artist contacts in Russia starting in the mid-’90s. Pare’s research on Russian modernism, architecture, and his photographs during numerous field trips abroad are the subject of his book, Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922-1932, as well as his newest photo exhibition at Lumière Gallery in Peachtree Hills. The opening reception is tonight, April 16 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

In his interview with World Socialist Web, Pare describes the process by which many buildings were constructed in Russia during the early 20th century: During fallow periods, in winter and the time between seedtime and harvest, peasants went into the cities to do construction work in what was an ongoing tradition long before the revolution. Contemporary photographs show scaffolding made up of great baulks of timber that is so cumbersome, and yet it is quite beautiful. What they did with such primitive means is amazing.

As techniques became more sophisticated, Russian architecture achieved a surprising variety and grace to rival the West. The photo above, which resembles Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous layout for the Guggenheim Museum, was actually “a communal house for officers of the Cheka (secret police), built as the result of a closed competition.” Viewed from above, the plan as a whole describes a hammer and sickle, extended “by a star motif in the reinforced concrete beams at the head of the staircase of the communal block.”

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