Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer and painter Yelena Yemchuk is most commonly known for her fashion and portrait photographs, which have appeared in Italian and Japanese Vogue, V, the New Yorker and The New York Times. Yet her personal work, which she usually shoots on a 35-mm camera while traveling around the globe, has rarely been seen. The photographs in this book were taken over three summers between 2005 and 2008 at Gidropark, an old amusement park (Yemchuk has called it "an Eastern European version of Coney Island") in Kiev that she often visited when she was growing up. Amid the park's beaches, sports grounds and woodlands, leisure becomes curiously otherworldly, with picnicking families stripped down to their bathing suits (or even less) taking on a Fellini-esque quality in Yemchuk's wistful shots.
Over the course of three summers, from 2005 to 2008, New York photographer Yelena Yemchuk returned to her childhood home of Kiev, Ukraine, to document the scene at Gidropark, the Dnieper River recreational complex built "for the people" in 1968. In Gidropark, her book of black-and-white photographs, Yemchuk captures an uncensored lot enjoying the beaches, overgrown lawns and primitive bodybuilding equipment in various stages of undress. Featured image is reproduced from Yelena Yemchuk: Gidropark.
Christiane Celle, Clic Gallery's founder, hosted a book signing reception on Wednesday, March 2nd with Ukranian born photographer Yelena Yemchuk, whose new book Gidropark is published by Damiani. Yemchuk is highly regarded for her fashion work, but this book, her first, focuses on a more personal project - portraits of sunbathers and picnickers at a public park in Kiev. Yemchuk's black-and-white photographs recall the work of Boris Mikhailov, but with a more romantic edge and an affinity for the beauty of the figure in a landscape. The crowd at Clic was made up of family, friends and admirers, including Yemchuk's partner Ebon Moss-Bachrach and their two children, actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, supermodel Carolyn Murphy, and fashion designers Victoria Bartlett and Jane Mayle. Tom Gitterman and Elena John of Gitterman Gallery will be mounting a show of the Gidropark photos in May. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.5 x 11 in. / 112 pgs / 70 duotone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 ISBN: 9788862081603 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 3/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer and painter Yelena Yemchuk is most commonly known for her fashion and portrait photographs, which have appeared in Italian and Japanese Vogue, V, the New Yorker and The New York Times. Yet her personal work, which she usually shoots on a 35-mm camera while traveling around the globe, has rarely been seen. The photographs in this book were taken over three summers between 2005 and 2008 at Gidropark, an old amusement park (Yemchuk has called it "an Eastern European version of Coney Island") in Kiev that she often visited when she was growing up. Amid the park's beaches, sports grounds and woodlands, leisure becomes curiously otherworldly, with picnicking families stripped down to their bathing suits (or even less) taking on a Fellini-esque quality in Yemchuk's wistful shots.
