Exhibitions

What do we know of the Black Sea? It seems to be shrouded in obscurity by its very name but this ancient waterway of civilisations is actually a very colourful place as the remarkable collection of images focusing upon the Black Sea from roughly a dozen photographers will illuminate.

The steps of those photographers who have walked along its shores over the past fifty years seem to have been quite cautious as illustrated by the sepia tones of the Crimean Snobism series by Boris Mikhailov, who approached the subject quite casually, as if to better tame it, or the light touches of black-and-white in Klavdij Sluban's discreet, Autour de la Mer Noire – Voyage d'hiver, or the nostalgic Black Sea:  Between Chronical and Fiction by Vanessa Winship (Vu).

It is almost a cliché now to say that much has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and of socialism, since the return of Romania and Bulgaria to the European fold and the emergence of modern Turkey.  But can a body of water change, too?  The rest of the collection examines the forgotten colours of the Black Sea.  It shows the reds and pinks of the Turkish tower blocks immortalised by George Georgiou (Panos Pictures).  There are the colours of the rebirth of Georgia as seen through the eyes of Justyna Mielnikiewicz.  We see the blues, purples and old reds of the Polaroids of Philippe Guionie (Myop) who takes us to the shores of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey with his delightful Kéraban series.  There are the faltering, nostalgic tones of Black Sea of Concrete by Rafal Milach or Crimea Soviet Nostalgia by Yuri Kozyrev (Noor) as well as the unforgettable pastel hues of Abkhazia by Gueorgui Pinkhassov (Magnum)