Oleg Kaplan: Portrait of a men | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2024

Photo artist Oleg Kaplan was born in 1967 in Moscow into a family of artists. Known for his series of photographs entitled “Glass”. Among his accomplishments – many popular galleries of works, several prestigious awards and work with major publishers. Oleg dedicated his life to photography. Any expert or critic can not definitively characterize the genre in which the author works.

Albert Einstein wrote that ‘the artist, poet, philosopher and naturalist theorizing, each in its own way’ involved ‘the creation of a simple and clear picture of the world’. Finding the highest point of spiritual experience, a person (individual) displays a chain of domestic and lower strata of life, forming their perception of reality. For the photographer Oleg Kaplan this point – the time of shooting. Any picture of the world is relative, as it is limited to human cognition and specific historical conditions of its formation. But the man is able to step over the boundaries inherent direct sensory perception, and artistic creativity is becoming one of the mechanisms that contribute to the output of a person for his creativity limits. Dominant for Oleg Kaplan is not the creation of a cultural product, but the shock and the rise of the whole human being.

Persuasiveness produced by the artistic image in a series of ‘Stefan’ is achieved through total immersion of a model in the action shooting, through the ‘living’ for this moment. Body and soul are together, connected plastically. Why does it work? Because it has a sacrament. Innuendo and mystery frame emit magnetism. Photographic process itself each time carries a small piece of heroism, because the photographer must be very resolute. In the determination a new vision, a new relationship between man and the world is reached. It is impossible to be passive in life and determined in shooting. It turns out that the survey translates the heroic action of the order for the rest of our earthly life. Determination and heroism- this is what Oleg requires from ourselves and from the model you are working on. In this paper, the model is necessary to identify the movement of gender, the EROS of the body. There by elevating the nature and essence of man, the idea of bringing it to a perfect face of God the Creator. Many, many great photographers went into it and revealed eroticism in their characters. Awareness of gender and its movement exposes the inner human element. Forming posture and movement pattern photographer makes the person feel the most strongly, or «feel» at the time of the shooting. Thus, the viewer empathizes with the image, because it is acted upon not just a form or posture, but eroticism. These techniques are used by Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon and other photographers.

In the works of Oleg Kaplan it is inevitable and necessary to show deep trust of the model to the photographer, only in this case, the model is fully revealed, ‘let’ themselves. Model comprehensively shows promise and momentum to the author so control and fear gradually disappears. In addition to a strong relationship of trust is established, in which the photographer and model are on the same frequency and have no words to understand each other, delving into the process of shooting and finding new images. It therefore can be operated by one and the same model, and year and two. Achieving their heroes living the moment of honesty, the author captures it onfilm, giving the viewer the possibility of visual catharsis. Art, says Werner Hofmann, the famous Austrian art historian, can not just go beyond a particular type of relative beauty, but also generally exempt from the principles of aesthetics, artistic principles. Form, style and aesthetic pleasures contrasted reality, horror, shock.

Always open to experimentation and risk, Oleg Kaplan never goes beyond the bounds of acceptable, despising a replacement of fake experience and feelings. Infinite inner desire to lead men to their boundaries, but not humiliating him, and magnify, because true beauty is something profound and overturning. Words inscribed in the Lincoln Center for the Arts in New York state read «art should not be on the periphery of life, and in the center of it.» After all, each and every style, whether baroque or classicism, romanticism and realism, have a common task- comprehension and artistic expression of the laws of existence. Revelation that shows us the true art extends thirst of creativity and authenticity of human life. Throughout the photographic path Oleg Kaplan does not illustrate the reality, but continues it, relentlessly expanding the brink of world perception of the viewer.

Website: www.olegkaplan.ru