13/24: Dmitry Konradt - Wells'n'Walls

The photographer Dmitry Konradt was born in 1954 in Leningrad, and lives in St. Petersburg, and has been taking photographs since the mid 70's. He has been a professional photographer since 1981. From the mid 80's he has been using colour photography. He has exhibited since 1987, and his colour photographs have been shown since 1993.

In the 80's Konradt was one of the main photographers of the Leningrad rock movement, an he exhibited at the Leningrad Rock Club. He participated in making records, the LP Red Wave, and in the samizdat journals Roxy, RIO and UrlaiT. His photographs appeared in western publications about Soviet rock - Stern and Actuel among others.

In 1993 he joined the Union of Photographic Artists in Russia, and he has been a member of the Russian Union of Artists since 1999.

He has worked with the magazines Subyektiv, Russkaya Viza, NOMI, and others.

He worked on the book Churches of Sankt-Peterburg, S. Shults, Glagol, 1994.

His most important individual exhibitions (more than 10 in all from 1993 to 2000) are:

1997 JUSTIFICATION OF LIGHT the Borei Gallery, St. Petersburg

1998 SILENCE OF LIGHT, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, St. Petersburg

2000 QUEST FOR LIGHT Museum Flat of A. Kuindzhi, in the festival Modern Art in a Traditional Museum, St. Petersburg.

2000 A SINGLE CITY - TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS (with J. J. Kissling), Bibliotheque de la Cite, Geneva

The aperture is the functional opening in an optical device determined by the dimensions of the lens or the diaphragm. With an open diaphragm (relative to the aperture) more light reaches the camera, and with a closed one, less. For architecture, an aperture constitutes an opening in walls or between them. There is no such thing as an endless blind wall - there are breaks in all of them, and in almost every wall you will find openings, crevices, gaps, doorways and window openings. The sizes, proportions, shapes and number of these breaks tells us more about a building than simply about a combination of walls and coverings. The structure of a building open to daylight is akin to the structure of a camera catching the light, and flights of stairs take shape in the iris diaphragm. Konradt photographs planes and surfaces which are impenetrable to light, and produces pictures of what is concealed behind them. (Yu. Avvakumov)