Igor Mukhin

Polka Galerie is pleased to announce its first collaborationwith Russian photographer Igor Mukhin. The exhibition titled “Génération Underground” is presented at the gallery from September 17 th to October 30 th , 2021, organized parallel to the artist’s major retrospective at the Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau in Gentilly.

Born in 1961 in Moscow, Igor Mukhin received his first camera at the age of 16. This rather commonplace gift was particularly important to him: “I was able to capture the world freely, develop my film and make my own prints without the risk of being spied on… It was kind of a miracle.” If this seems like an exaggeration, it's because it may be hard for westerners to imagine life on the other side of the Iron Curtain in the 1980s and 1990s.

The exhibition at the Polka Galerie brings together two sets of the artist’s prints. Each of these sets covers a specific period in Russian history.

The first is a selection of vintage prints from the 1980s and 1990s in 13x18 cm format: a small size that allowed the prints to be easily circulated under the radar at rock concerts and their afterparties… Simply being passionate about this type of music in Moscow at the time was a blatant transgression: “Because they were banned, these albums cost an arm and a leg on the black market. For example, two “Kiss” records could cost the equivalent of an engineer’s monthly salary!”

Many local rock bands were formed in the mid-1980s in the USSR. They performed in private apartments, giving underground concerts, which allow them to earn a living. Viktor Tsoï, a musician and icon of the Soviet counter-culture, who died in 1990 at the age of 28, sang of a wind of change that was about to sweep the nation. He embodied an entire generation that was breaking with tradition.

The second set of photographs are a series of prints that served as reference for the publishing of Mukhin’s book, "Born in the USSR", in 2005. These images depict the great upheavals that followed the birth of the Russian Federation during the Yeltsin era, as well as the start of Putin's reign in the 2000s. Under the bright new billboards, this new generation of youth evolved in a schizophrenic society, trapped between vestiges of communism and the allure of capitalism.

From the perestroika to contemporary Russia, Igor Mukhin takes us on board his time machine straight to the heart of the Russian underground.