Alexander Gronsky

Pastoral

Alexander Gronsky

born in 1980 in Tallin (Estonia)

In Pastoral (2008-2012), Alexander Gronsky intended on finding a perfect world in which man and nature were in harmony, and he explored this relationship in the suburbs of Moscow.Read more

"I had the need to find a place that was neither natural nor manmade: the urban periphery, a frontier between habitat and chaos. Zones that are neither urban nor rural. Places that are difficult to give names to."

In this series, the Estonian photographer displays how the inhabitants of Moscow change when they leave their city. He equally gives a new definition to this rural universe: picnics on riverbanks, lovers meeting, bathing on the shores of the metropolis, bizarre tanning sessions. The artist suggests that in these rural scenes we forget the austere, ominous shadows of buildings, the concrete, and the construction sites.

The people within the photographs appear disconnected from a reality which is recalled in the somber shadows of the buildings that hover in the distance.