These photo-sequences by Helen Zakhtser are an intriguing project which, in our opinion, fit neatly into the contemporary trend for turning photography in a way of investigating the internal substance of things, rather than their outer exoskeleton. On the cusp of the twenty-first century we observe almost exactly the same things as in photography at the turn of the twentieth century, but with new technology and a new ideology. Using the basis of a "direct frame", which can present almost anything at all – a striking reportage image, a captured moment, a snap-shot, or any random moment when the shutter was pressed accidentally – on the basis of any of this an artist who fills their work with meaning and association can form an image which is a hundred miles from any prototype.
In these series the author has opted for a subject which might at first appear romantic, whilst the form is automatically the kind of archetypal memory we consider "beautiful" or "elegant". This is a risky path to follow, since it might be thought simply banal? Yet, such classical subjects present a valuable field for experiment. Can there be new meanings here, and how can they be perceived? It's very likely that beautiful people, beautiful clothes and beautiful dance continue to exert their appeal upon onlookers, who (perhaps unconsciously) keenly establish contact with images which, on one hand, may chime with their own individual experience, and on the other brings associations of the sublime, the 'artistic'. It means that the artwork is automatically perceived as a thing of elegance, because it was always intended as such.
The feeling of the original photograph remains – the observer can more-or-less guess its original context – the costumes of the dancers, the vaguely-watching crowds of spectators, the space where it all happens – and it all hints at the competition, the rivalries, the attraction-grabbing action. Yet the author has already moved away into a realm of dreams, images and memories of other worlds, in which real dancers are transmuted into a flickering image, and the photograph into some amalgam of a display on a thermal image-screen, a pastel drawing, stenciled graffiti and a view through wet matte glass. The photograph is already so unlike a photograph that observers may not even recognise it as such. Although from the second look the "documentary" image begins to peer through the technical and semantic layer process. The author finds an intriguing algorithm between the real and the depicted, which both fascinates and perturbs the viewers, forcing them to go back for a second impression.
The author's primary meaning – its "message", we might say – can't be immediately discerned. The author concentrates on the drawing, underscores and highlights the individual shapes, while suppressing others. Reality becomes radically altered, and takes on new colours and a different texture. How far does the meaning change in all this? The author takes on the eternal dichotomy between form and content on the level of the materials. She resolves it, while leaving space for interpretation and searching. Helen Zakhtser has succeeded in creating an image whose ambiguity captures our thoughts, and which gives us pause for thought.

Helen Zakhtser's photo-series "Portraits Of Moments” may be laconic in style, but technically complex. Each of the photographs has been colour-reworked by hand. Each of the images reproduced as photographs becomes a unique self-standing artwork. Out of a dark background, from absolute emptiness, the artist conceives a moment that is flushed with a single emotion. The photographer has chosen, perhaps, the optimal visual representation of a complex set of ideas – the musician's personality, the reaction of the audience, and the atmosphere which the music evoked. All that we see is this moment, emerging from a void – a moment turned into an image. The image seems simple, in its basic form – one letter, or one single note – but it helps us to conceive a welter of meanings, feelings, intonations and shades. Each performer is shown simultaneously as an outstanding and irreplaceable individual, and as a symbol – a symbol of a single moment of fusion with the music.
The photographs seem quite simple, static and self-sufficient – but they are simultaneously infused with an energy that pulsates somewhere below the surface, and seems somehow to slacken the tension. There is a tactile, tangible contact. This is what justifies the colour-reworking, that serves as a conduit between worlds – sound, emotion, and image.

In March 2018, the National Gallery of the Komi Republic hosted an exhibition by Moscow photographer Elena Zakhtser - who has successfully exhibited her work at many different displays and competitions. On this occasion, the venue where her latest projects were displayed was the city of Sykhtyvkar – the capital city of the Komi Republic. The topic of the pictures was sport, specifically boxing – an interpretation of man's inner strength and physical stamina, seen not only through the artistic images in the photographs, but also on the level of a philosophical reading of what the modern world understands by the term 'superhuman'.
The exhibition is relatively compact, comprising 19 works taken over the period of 2010 to 2017. In fact, the series 'A Tale Of Arms' dates from 2012, and in the main exhibition was divided into two separate themes – of boxers, and of bouts. The nub of the series is documentary material – even though the author doesn't list the dates or details of the bouts which are shown. Its documentary credibility relies not so much on the recognisability of the competitors and the branding on their sportswear, as on the effect of the outcome of their struggle, and what actually happens in each frame.
The photographs depicting boxers convey the highest achievement in artistic imagery – they are true portraits, which channel a different meaning, highlighting the subject's inner feelings, in which everything becomes outstandingly, holistically and sympathetically interwoven. We behold the boundless inner essence, the ephemeral present moment, and a glimpse into a future programmed from the outset for the moment of victory. The visual array of Elena Zakhtser's boxers – consisting, as it does, of a series of utterly differentiated individuals – nevertheless succeeds in presenting a single, potent, generalised image of what an athlete is. We see not only accomplished 'pros', but the overlay of some 'superhuman' traits – they are natural, human, and even routine.
Creating this kind of image cannot sidestep the element of adulation – the author endows the images with heroic greatness by citing a line from Virgil's epic poem 'the Aeneid' in the series' title – hymning the valour of those who, as legend prophesied, laid the basis for the civilisation of Ancient Rome. The juxtaposition of the heroism of antiquity alongside today's society – a society flailing to discover the roots of its own existence – once again raises the ideological context of the surrounding situation which harks back to a consolidation of a unified beginning, in a world where all is allotted by gender. We are led towards ideas that we should not shrink irrevocably from our understanding of humanity's stronger half.
The ideological depth of the exhibition was further bolstered by an extract from Friedrich Nietzsche's treatise 'Ecce Homo – Behold How Man Becomes Himself”. Here the issue goes beyond the material presented in the exhibition itself – elegantly enscribed by the Moscow Academy of Calligraphy, and creatively realised by students of the Komi Republic College of Arts, on the eve of the exhibition – but reaches into the author's own approach, which has become the underlying theme of her creative credo. In picturing his own era as a period of spiritual crisis, Nietzsche believed the key to man's transformation lay in the rebirth of Dionysian principles which have lain latent and oppressed in man due to the traditions of Christianity. By proclaiming the death of God, the philosopher laid the basis for recognition of deeper strata of the human soul – whose unveiling, as he saw it, should lead to the appearance of the 'superhuman'. The journey from the everyday reportage of a boxing bout, to conceptualised ideas about whether it is possible to find the modern prototype whom Nietzsche's treatise hailed, reveals a further aspect of the author's logic in creating her exhibition.
A further nuance the exhibition displays - on a level of sensory perception - is the exceptional quality with which the photos are printed. It's impossible to suggest that viewing a digital copy or reproduction could replace the immediacy of sensation produced by viewing the original work – a superbly achieved photograph. No electronic format is able to convey the author's whole intent to the viewer. Elena Zakhtsers' photographs are, first and foremost, artworks. Their author has a pre-determined artistic conception when taking each frame - achieved through the lighting, camera angle, background, and fully thought-out with that idea which in art is termed the study of nature. The choice to present the works in a black-and-white format certainly brings them closer to natural perfection.
The series entitled 'Set' had originally been intended as an element of the exhibition, bolstering a dramatic intensity in which the burning ardour of power, spirit and will could alternate with considered contemplation of all the static and immovable phenomena and objects of the surrounding world. It seems the author's selection of these objects, of differing textures, sometimes find a symbiosis at level of comparison – such as rags with wood, stone with metal.. but more frequently, and shown separately, as piled logs, or an upward-leading series of battered stone steps, a heap of shingles; or the single image in exception to the inanimate ideas of a half-open elephant's eyelid. Their textures are so tangibly shown that we perceive them simultaneously on both a visual and an imagined tactile level of sensation.
It seems likely that it should be so at such an exhibition - which aims at the concordant intersection of photography, sporting heroes, and a philosophical Weltanschaung – could become an interactive platform at which students could meet professional boxers. The students not only found out more deeply about the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, but gave their own personal presentations on topics such as the theme of medicine in the visual arts, or intellectual club games – where questions revolved around photography, boxing, and art, and concluded with the confident victory of connoiseurs.