On 1 September 2023, an exhibition of Yuri Molodkovets’s photographs entitled “L’Ermitage la nuit. Lieu de retraite” [The Hermitage by Night. A Place of Retreat] opens at the Centre Spirituel et Culturel Orthodoxe Russe in Paris.
The display presents a series of night-time photographs of one of the world’s greatest museums – the Hermitage. The project was shot in the Winter Palace, Small, Old and New Hermitages in 2005, over a period of nine months. Yuri Molodkovets worked in the halls by night, when they have not only hardly any people in them, but also hardly any light. The result was a cycle of pictures that tells of the private, secret life of things, about a special segment of time and space in which the subjects of the shots – moonlight, a reflection in cloudy glass and the movement of shadows – seem to acquire a soul, and the camera capturing such moments becomes a psychic medium capable of establishing contact with a unreal world.
“The Hermitage is, by definition, a place of solitude, and it manages to be one even in our crowded time. But there is another ‘solitude’ here too – that of the night, when the museum belongs to the exhibits and to those specks of light that penetrate into the halls through the windows, the chinks and curtains so as to converse with the paintings and sculptures. There are no ghosts in the Hermitage. They are driven out by the memory living in the walls and mirrors of generations and individuals who were here briefly or for long. By day that memory talks with the visitors, by night with the things, the witnesses of various eras and events.
“By night in the Hermitage one can encounter guards on patrol and the photographer Yuri Molodkovets. He has long since become part of the museum and is able to spot, capture and preserve some amazing moments in the dialogue of architecture, exhibits and light that tell about many historical and artistic worlds. He also manages to cut into their conversation himself and to convey in his strange photographs the mood of nocturnal anticipation of ghosts that do not really exist. Or do they. In any case, the Solitude project gives everyone the happy opportunity to possess a little piece of the night-time Hermitage,” Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented.
The Hermitage as a museum is made unique by the fact that the masterpieces are located not in some sterile space created to display them, but in historical interiors with their own long, at times tragic biography. And while the museum is a repository of humanity’s loftiest constructive and creative activities, this project is an an attempt to present the state of things post-humanity. The sun has gone out, human history has ended, and the masterpieces alone exude their own inner light.
“The Hermitage is a bustling place… The queue out onto Palace Square, the crowd in the Rastrelli Gallery, the hubbub in the Skylight Halls, you, hurrying about your business, skilfully manoeuvring through this stream of people, suddenly find yourself in a completely empty hall, where even the air is still, where time has been stopped… You sense something different; you can make a halt, spend a moment outside of time… You take a breath of solitude and continue on your way, like all the rest.
“I am a museum photographer. Between me and all the paintings, all the objects that I have photographed for exhibitions, catalogues and books a connection now exists, a strange tie of kinship... The Hermitage is a precious thing, a treasure made up of the buildings, objects and people that have been, are and will be. The Hermitage is direct and precise evidence that our existence is not meaningless. It does not matter what will be when human history ends. The Hermitage is our justification. Here another system of coordinates exists: it is stupid to rate one’s own significance higher than zero when standing before Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son. Here you are preserved and saved, and tested for resilience.
“I work in the Winter Palace, everything in that phrase seems fantastic… The Hermitage is also my place of work. What can one gain from working here? Freedom in life and life after death,” Yuri Molodkovets stated.
The display consists of a series of black-and-white photographs (41 prints in the formats 75×110 cm and 125×170 cm). Pentax 645 camera, Ilford Delta 100 film, Ilford paper, hand-printed and Kodak Endura paper.
The exhibition “Yuri Molodkovets. L’Ermitage la nuit. Lieu de retraite” has been organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Centre Spirituel et Culturel Orthodoxe Russe in Paris.
About its creator:
Yuri Molodkovets (born 1963) is an artist-photographer of the State Hermitage, where he has worked for thirty years, the creator of photographs for over 200 catalogues and illustrated books devoted to the Hermitage’s stocks and collections, books on the history and architecture of Saint Petersburg. He is curator of the Museum Art Photography project, and operates several accounts in the Hermitage’s social media. He is known as one of the most interesting photographers who actively contributes to Russian and foreign art magazines and publications on art, architecture and design, the creator of more than 40 large-scale personal photographic projects that have been presented at exhibition venues in Russia and Europe.
Yuri Molodkovets’s works can be found in the collections of 18 Russian museums, and also in private collections in Russia, France, the UK, USA and Israel. He is a member of the Artists’ Union of Russia, the Union of Designers and the Russian Geographical Society.
