Igor Koshelev – Утро доброго дня (2010)

My Russian was never exactly, how you say: хорошо and the title of this seems untranslatable in an idiomatic sort of way. Best guess, it means something along the lines of the way you might pass a neighbor on the street and as if to indicate the pleasant weather, you were to say: looks like it’s gonna be a wonderful day.

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I like the way the title functions here. It doesn’t add anything–only reifies what’s there. It’s the way a narrative image should be titled. Not that this is a narrative image, mind you but it’s at the very least on the right track: you have characters, setting and an inference of what’s happened previous and what will almost certainly follow (i.e. this is a new couple who’ve probably been up late into the night fucking and are about to digress into a diversion that will result in eating their breakfast cold).

There’s too many questions for me to suspend my disbelief enough to accept that this is representative of a narrative. I have no idea if this is her place or his. My suspicion is it’s neither–it feels like a while the parents are away the kids will play sort of scenario; yet there is nothing in the image that speaks to that question. (Also, I’m reasonably willing to bet this image was not taken in the morning. You stare at B&W negs long enough and you start to pick up subtle tones and textures. Gun to my head, I’d swear this was shot on an autumn evening in a decidedly northern latitude.)

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This is really the only image of Koshelev that is tolerable. The rest are complete garbage–like truly fucking terrible–which is odd considering despite it’s flaws, this would seem to suggest that this might be the early work of a wonderful photographer.