In search of monumental propaganda

Thirty years ago, at the sunset of the Soviet era, the Russian photographer Igor Mukhin began to take off what was left of the Soviet monumental propaganda. Traveling around Russia and the republics of the former USSR, Mukhin cataloged the monuments decorating the central city squares, stations, metro station, parks, pioneering .... "... a photo of the construction of the monument to Zhukov can easily be confused with the disassembly of the monument to some revolutionary figure: if not for a horse, one process would be difficult to distinguish from another. The era of folk monuments has ended, the people are now formed by the apparatuses of the state without its direct participation (the authorities can no longer afford the luxury of the content of the state people) Therefore, previous images are trying to forget the annoying episode: oblivion, in fact, overtakes them before decay. The statues break up already forgotten: after worship and its wrong side, destruction, apathy follows. They are replaced by state and church symbols of the new government, which erects them on his own, without waiting for the sanction of the absorbed by survival, a depolitized people (I understand that it is difficult to imagine a state living in old civilians, which exists, as it were, in addition to its citizens. But you need to make an effort ..) This partly explains the intentionally neutral background of the photographs of I. Mukhin: Thus, pathos is removed, in this way. which the preceding era endowed these images. Often looking at the unexpected details that are not provided for by the sculptor, but are included in his work by time or poor performance. The natural environment in which these monuments are given plays a no less role than the time of their erection. Nature literally absorbs them, they scatter from time to time - only bast shoes and jugs remained from one monument on the pedestal, only legs from another. Before us is a self-destroying archive, left to himself: it seemed that no one except the photographer is interested in maintaining it and capturing ... "Mikhail Ryklin (Moscow, January 10-12, 1995)