Diego Cortez
Suddenly Last Summer
Curatorial statement, May 2011
Shiva (Marko), New York City, 2010
In Slava Mogutin's Suddenly Last Summer, twenty-five photographic images of male subjects are set in traces of blurred summer color. They are taken with the Holga camera, whose plastic lens delivers the type of experimental accidents for which Jack Smith and Stan Brakhage strove. The resulting light leaks and multiple exposures allow Mogutin a new impressionist vision wherein a rich and refracted spectrum is layered into the penetrating light of day.
These images are not erotic per se but emotional – an expression of love's natural freedom as opposed to repression's unnatural grip. In perfect contrast to Sebastian's horrifying noonday martyrdom in Tennessee Williams' play, the subjects of Mogutin's Suddenly Last Summer live and perform in the open, in brilliant air, full color and natural light. These luminous pictures celebrate a polychrome Eden that has actually, largely arrived.
© Diego Cortez, 2011