Give it your borsht shot

Max Epstein’s new exhibition at the Agrippas 12 gallery offers a trip down memory lane.

By BARRY DAVIS
Boy shooting (521) (photo credit: ‘Diadka s Sobakoy’ Courtesy Max Epstein)
Boy shooting (521)
(photo credit: ‘Diadka s Sobakoy’ Courtesy Max Epstein)
They say you should never go back, but Max Epstein did just that – several times. They also say nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, but Epstein wasn’t necessarily looking to bask in the sweet memories of his childhood hometown – it was more a matter of looking for a new perspective.
Epstein, who hails from Pskov at the northwestern end of Russia near Estonia, made aliya in 1990, at the age of 16. He took his first serious steps in the world of photography when he was a teenager at the Open Photography Seminar in Ramat Gan, and later studied ceramic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He has also taught animation at the Sapir College and works in theater set design.
Epstein’s latest exhibition, “Borsht,” opened at the Agrippas 12 gallery last month and offers a thought-provoking excursion down memory lane.
However, before we get to grips with the visual material, there is a certain gastronomic conundrum to be unraveled.
“We chose the name for the exhibition as a sort of ironic play on the concept of nostalgia,” says Epstein. “Nostalgia really isn’t what it used to be, nor is it what it is now,” he continues somewhat enigmatically, before explaining that the theme is aimed not only at his own forays into the past but also as an attempt to fathom a more general sentiment.
“Despite the fact that Jews from the former Soviet Union have been here for over 20 years, and some – like [exhibition curator] Sasha [Okun] – came in the ’70s, there is a sense of longing for the past, of what they had over there,” notes Epstein.
However, he does not subscribe to this view. “All sorts of professionals have addressed this phenomenon of longing for your former country,” he says. “This [exhibition] is a sort of response to that. There’s no nostalgia here – only irony.”
Okun believes there is a particularly Russian element to pining for yesteryear.
“You know that in all languages, a person’s nationality is an adjective – you are French or British or Italian, and so forth. In the Russian language, all nationalities are adjectives except for one – ‘Russian’ is a noun.
That is intriguing. It is as if, in Russian, the Russian person belongs to his place, to his country. He is a feature of it. So maybe nostalgia is a characteristic of expat Russians regardless of whether or not they are Jewish.
“What is important is the place and the culture. I have been here 30 years and Max has been here 20 years. He came here as a youngster and I came here when I was 30, but we are still a product of the Russian culture,” he concludes.
Epstein also attaches importance to the singular cultural ebb and flow of his adopted hometown. “I feel that, in our domain, we are all foreigners – not just Russian; Jerusalem is a place of foreigners, and communication between us all falls between one narrative and another.
“This exhibition is also some kind of Jerusalem mix. Here I have brought figures that are so-called ‘nostalgic,’ with Russian figures – you’ve got [iconic Russian men of letters] Pushkin and Gorky and Glinka,” he says, pointing to a horn-shaped element on the wall with dolls hanging from it, “but I address it all through a local, Jerusalem prism.”
The show primarily comprises black-andwhite photographs, which Epstein took over a two-year period during which he made three trips to Pskov.
“If I had gone there as a tourist I would have spent a couple of days there, taken 20 rolls of film and left,” Epstein notes. “Going there a few times allowed me to think about things, let things cook and discover what it was I was looking for, if anything at all.”
The monochrome medium naturally lends itself to historic imagery, and was purposely chosen to impart that sense of the past, in the present. There is little in the way of color in the show, and what there is is more in the way of incidental augmentation. One black-and-white photo, for example, takes on reddish hues as the sun moves across a window on the opposite wall, which is covered in red transparent sheeting.
Epstein also wants us to do some of the work ourselves. “You can add any colors you want to monochrome pictures, in your own mind,” he proffers. “It’s the same with nostalgia. We all have our memories and we can bring them here.”
Of course, borsht comes from the same end of the aesthetic spectrum. But it is about more than just being red. “Borsht is an internationally recognized dish, which so many people know,” Epstein observes, “but no one really knows what the ingredients are. That’s exactly what I am cooking here. You have here something that you could call borsht.”
Then again, once a dish is cooked you can’t deconstruct it and separate the component parts. Epstein’s exhibition, however, incorporates separate parts that can be observed, discussed and even removed. Surely, the similarity ends there. “Yes, you can see all the different pieces of my exhibition,” admits Epstein, “so, in a way, I am saying ‘you want nostalgia? here it is. This is the borsht, let’s taste it together and see what it’s like.’” Epstein plays the temporal theme to a T.
The subjects he chose could have been photographed half a century ago or more and would have been just as topical and relevant.
There are a couple of striking prints of a young boy in a wood playing with a gun.
Epstein was looking to capture a sort of unkempt semi-pastoral feel, but he got more than he bargained for. In one picture we see the boy side-on, lazily whiling his day away in meditative play. But in another he is seen aiming his rifle in our direction, and he looks like he means business.
“That was a real gun and I jumped when he pointed it at me,” Epstein recalls. “I just took the picture and fell over. I was really startled.”
Other pictures feature buildings that were around before Epstein relocated, and the occasional human subjects could easily have been photographed in the 1950s. The march of time truly seems to have been arrested. “I spoke to the locals and I noted that nothing had changed there since I left,” says Epstein, “but they said, ‘of course we have made progress: look at this building, that’s new, and that over there, that is new too.’” Nostalgia really does appear to be a matter of perspective.
“Borsht” is showing until August 19. For more information: www.agripas12gallery.com.