Maria Ionova-Gribina. From the ‘War’ project. 2014—2016. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist Alexander Veryovkin. From the ‘1 second equals 2.31 meters in real world’ project. 2014. Video, sound. Video stills. Courtesy of the artist Andrey Ivanov. From Identity Index project. 2012—2015. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist Jegor Zaika.From Motherland project.2015. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist Pascal Colrat.From the series “Fox soup”. 2009.© Pascal Colrat Lucia Ganieva. ​ ​ From the "Kuvady" series. ​ ​ 2008. ​ ​ Courtesy of the artist Thierry Bouët. Dog Trophies. 2015. Personal Affairs series. Courtesy of Thierry Bouët Jana Romanova. From the Shvilishvili project. 2013—2014. Installation fragment. Courtesy of the artist

Pascal Colrat Fox Soup
Curator: Anna Zaitseva
With the support of the Embassy of France in Russia and the French Institute in Russia
With the support of Ahmad Tea in Russia

Jana Romanova Shvilishvili
Curator: Anna Zaitseva
With the support of Ahmad Tea in Russia

Zhenya Mironov Rough Sunset, Japanese Plastic
Curator: Anna Zaitseva

Elizaveta Chukhlantseva The Story of General Safiullin
Curator: Nina Levitina
The project is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia
With the support of the Foundation of Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantine Sorokin

Jegor Zaika Motherland
Curator: Nina Levitina
With the support of MasterCard Priceless Cities

Alexander Veryovkin 1 second equals 2.31 meters in real world
The project is presented by МАММ and the FotoDepartament Foundation, St-Petersburg
With the support of Ahmad Tea in Russia

Andrey Ivanov Identity Index
Curator: Anna Zaitseva
The project is presented by МАММ and the FotoDepartament Foundation, St-Petersburg

Maria Ionova-Gribina. Only A Game?
Curator: Anna Zaitseva

Lucia Ganieva Kuvady
Curator: Anna Zaitseva
The project is presented by МАММ and the Schilt Gallery, Amsterdam

Ekaterina Mamontova Mosh, Folk Summer Fest
Curator: Igor Mukhin
The project is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia
Arnold Veber 16 Colours
The project is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia

Dmitry Starusev Folklore Expedition. Part 1: Forest. Part 2: Zelenograd, Donbass
Curator: Sergei Bratkov
The project is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia

Thierry Bouët Personal Affairs
Curator: Sam Stourdzé
The project is presented by the Photography Meetings of Arles International Festival LOGO
With the support of Ahmad Tea in Russia

MMOMA at 17 Ermolaevsky presents art projects by Russian and international authors as part of the XI International Month of Photography in Moscow PHOTOBIENNALE-2016.

Some authors explore family history in search of self. The Fox Soup project by celebrated French photographer and artist Pascal Colrat is a reconstruction of dramatic events, occurred in his family in 1935. Besides, many photos are accompanied by the history of their creation. Thus, the project by Colrat also narrates about what it is to be a photographer and allows us to understand the most important aspects of creativity.

Jana Romanova also refers to her family history. The title of her project Shvilishvili is literally translated as a «son of the son» and talks about continuity, where the author finds a new impetus to gain her own identity. More broadly, the author reflects on the value of family photos, on the family in the modern world and on how people maintain family ties, divided by national borders and tragic family events.

Other photographers searching identity feel the need to go beyond the family. It is largely due to the desire to reflect the identity vacuum, arising after the collapse of the USSR. Elizaveta Chukhlantseva uses a snapshot-for-the-family-album method to reveal the story of a Russian street. Her project is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (the studio of Valery Nistratov). Lucia Ganieva invites us to make a nostalgic trip back in the time of her childhood. The village Kuvady is a prototype. Jegor Zaika defines the concept of Motherland by means of triggers, which instantly take us in the 1980s-1990s. The objects, familiar to everyone who has lived through the era of shortages in the Soviet stores, evoke memories that shape our collective understanding of the Motherland.

Alexander Veryovkin tries to understand his Motherland empirically. The author took the well-known map of Russia as a basis and rode his bike around the field, trying to exactly replicate the shape of the borders. The bicycle-mounted camera recorded all the troubles of his two-hour trip.

Andrey Ivanov is an archeologist of the modern metropolis. He records anonymous slogans, located at the periphery of the modern political discourse. The official internationalism of the Soviet period, crashed with the collapse of the USSR, is filled with monosyllabic and polar concepts of national identity, often appealing to the archaic and ideologies, which have seemingly proved their complete failure.

The Donbass, Forest and Zelenograd projects are folklore expeditions, undertaken by Dmitry Starusev, a student of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (the studio of Sergei Bratkov), in search of the genius loci.

Ekaterina Mamontova is also a student of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (the studio of Igor Mukhin). She explores ways of escapism available to a modern man, who tries to overcome the alienation and loneliness. The Folk Summer Fest and the Mosh series are devoted to the theme.

French photographer Thierry Bouët attempts to uncover the human personality through personal things. The Private Affairs series combines stories of people, who sell the most incredible items on the web. Among them there is an old castle, dog trophies, an unclaimed coffin or an incomplete set of pastis glasses.

In her new project Only A Game?, Maria Ionova-Gribina combines photo portraits of kids with their favorite toy guns as well as with advertising slogans of online stores, selling these toys. The author doesn’t impose her own assessments. She invites the viewers to decide on their own what emotions are evoked in them by the kids with weapons accompanied by enticing slogans, i.e. «Thanks to war games, boys become real men» or «Any kid will enjoy his assault rifle with removable laser sight».

The project by Polina Muzika is presented by the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (curator Sergei Bratkov). It deals with perverse human reactions in the period of crisis. Pica or taste perversion, characterized by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive, is one of them. Such deviation is seen not only in children, but also in adults as a reaction to stress.

Zhenya Mironov offers to appeal to the search for new visuality as a response to the ideological crisis. To his mind, in order to provoke the viewer, to change his opinion, it is necessary to change his perception, to depart from one-dimensional understanding of the world around him.

Arnold Veber is a graduate of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (the studio of Igor Mukhin). Using pure techniques, he searches for ways to keep the identity of the visual information, even under the most adverse conditions. In the 16 colors project, he proves that we are not as dependent on the perception of information in the digital environment as we used to think. To seize the essence, we only need a single header or a preview. The raster image structure allows Veber to manipulate the size, increasing it as he wants. And low resolution of his images helps them to preserve and to transfer its information gene even at a weak Internet connection.