To take a detached view of the home town where you have been living for many years is a challenge, and to commit this view in a photo is a great challenge. Within a year, nine participants of the photo laboratory were pursuing the target: to present Satka using various optics. This resulted in four photo laboratories and each one studied a season using particular techniques. In each photo laboratory the complexity of Satka urban landscape attracted loving and curious glances of photographers. 

The winter landscape was the first subject to study. The authors were encouraged to direct their attention to the white space around them and to the place of architecture and people in it. The street photo of spring as a symbol of a new birth directed the lens of the research group at the people in town spaces. The summer architectural shooting was a logical extension of the initial line, the participants withdrew from the general understanding of the territory and delved into the observation of smaller forms, such as buildings, monuments and street elements. The autumn portrait subject led to the experimental focus on a person living in Satka: on oneself and people around.

The laboratories were aimed at revealing the strong points of the participating photographers: each author was working on his/her task within the broad theme, which resulted in a remarkable composition of visual symbols describing modern Satka. The town landscape has merged with a person and previously unnoticeable buildings have turned from a mere background into objects deserving not only close attention, but admiration as well.

The final exhibition is a kind of collection of visual stories about the town, where the story of each author is absolutely independent, but all of them are united by a common line of the survey, the belief in the value of the space itself and the possibility to see it in different ways. That is why the final exhibition is also an invitation for each spectator to see the home town in a new light: where there are nine stories, dozens, hundreds and thousands of new ones might appear. 

The participants of the laboratory included photographers from Satka and Baikal: Sergey Belov, Maria Kotchergova, Vasily Maksimov, Polina Kuznetsova, Denis Shakirov, Olga Kuzmenko, Kseniya Gusak, Egor Lazurenko and Pavel Kuleshov.

The exhibition will take place in Magnezit Museum from 28 February to 30 March.

Address: 34 Solnechnaya St., Satka 

Opening hours: 

Monday- Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., break from 12:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.

Saturday-Sunday from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

The curator of the photo laboratory: Sergey Poteryaev

Text by Sergey Poteryaev, Zhenya Chaika.

Photos by Sergey Belov and Maria Kotchergova.