The Russians Emerge
Heidi Hollinger
August 17 to September 24, 2006
| Heidi Hollinger was born in Montreal in 1968. She graduated with a degree
in Modern Languages from McGill University (English, French, Finnish, Russian
and Spanish). In 1991 she moved to Moscow to teach English at Moscow State
University. In 1992 she returned there as a graduate student in Political
Science. In 1994 she began work as the first non-Russian photo editor at
the leading national daily newspaper Pravda. In the same year, her first
exhibit Faces of the Opposition opened at the Moscow Photo Center. Featuring
stylistically unprecedented photographs of Russia’s political elite,
the show would travel across Russia, then to Montreal and Los Angeles. Heidi Hollinger is widely credited with having revolutionized political photography in Russia during her 10-year residence in its great capital city in the 90s. Through her “non-iconic” portraits of leading politicians, she not only created new ways of depicting personalities but made herself into a celebrity in the process. Her professional exploits and even her personal life are followed by the national media, making her, in the words of former Canadian Ambassador to Russia, Rodney Irwin, “the best-known Canadian in Russia”. Between 1999 and 2002 she published five books in Canada, the United States, and Russia. Her most recent, The Russians Emerge (Abbeville Press, New York 2002) documents a great culture in thrilling social and political transformation, and features text by Russia expert Jonathan Sanders and a foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev. She his represented by the HollingerCollins Contemporary Art Gallery in Westmount. Visit: www.hollingercollins.com |
