Mariya Ustymenko

Motion and Silence

“Motion and Silence” is a set in progress. It moves through time and space, or rather through times and places, being unattached and dislocated, yet complete in itself at any given moment of pause. Each photograph presents a snippet in a mosaic, a story within a story. The narrative is broken and non-linear, there is no starting point and no ending, no questions posed, no answers given. Yet captured in their flight are perfect moments. Perfect in their imperfections. In their fragility. In the importance of all the bigger pictures left outside their frames.

All images within the set were taken on Lubitel-2 and present a love song to this affordable yet poetic lomographic medium. An amateur twin-lens reflex camera, produced between 1955 and 1997, it has received recognition as a higher-end product among the LOMO cameras, replicas of which populate the market targeting the young film photographers interested in the medium format and art photography.

If one had to ask me whether a camera is important when taking a good picture, my answer would be no. Yet, I find myself inevitably attached to this Soviet mechanical camera, its focus soft, its nature unpredictable. This vintage relic of the past, branded by its “Amateur” title, possesses a life of its own. It looks at the outside world with wonder in its twin reflex lenses. Born among the production noise of the state-run optics manufacturing section of Soviet defense plant in the midst of Cold War, this mechanical toy outlived the imperious giant that produced it. It finds itself struggling in grasping changes. The light travels unevenly along the surface of its film. The images shimmer and sometimes find themselves too timid to come out. Yet, the world reflected through Lubitel is never a fiction. The camera captures its strangeness and beauty with the precision rarely found among the best of documenters.

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