Vladimir Zuev \ The Metropolitan

Vladimir Zuev is a student of the A. Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia, which was founded by the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow in 2006 and now celebrates its 10th anniversary. In particular Zuev has studied with Igor Mukhin, who has for many years led the school’s Immediate Photography workshop.

“The Moscow Metro is a colossal architectural project, once one of the central symbols of Soviet power and today the most important mode of transport in the city,” says the author of this exhibit. “It is a legend combining art, history and romanticism. In this series I try to capture modern-day Russia as I know it, the state and mood of society, its anxieties and hopes.”

Above all we are familiar with the Metro as an indistinguishable crowd we have to dive into every day, trying to slip through as swiftly as possible, without paying attention to what goes on around us. Vladimir Zuev seems to aim his magnifying glass at the flow and catch the mise-en-scènes, by turns comical, absurd or dramatic, of what is apparently a rich and very complex life form, reflecting like a drop of water the life of the socium and the individual in general — love, indifference, jealousy, irritability, mutual suspicion and tension.