Mélanie Manchot @ Photographer's Gallery

Melanie Manchot, Manege, 3.23pm, from Groups and Locations (Moscow), 2004

The show entitled Stories from Russia is on since the 21st of January to the 27th of February 2005. A photographic series (Groups and Locations (Moscow)) and a video piece (Hotel Moscow) constitute the bulk of this exhibition.
Charlotte Cotton, Head of Programming for the Photographer's Gallery, states: "Groups and Locations (Moscow) and Hotel Moscow both hinge on Manchot’s construction of situations in which contemporary Russians both perform and reveal themselves. The resulting photographs and video sequences are intriguing versions of portraiture that consciously draw together contemporaneity and history, private and public, individual and collective ideas about Russia and its citizens."
In Hotel Moscow, indeed, six moscovites give their account of events that underpinned the construction of Moscow's most peculiar Hotel. The story behind the Hotel being that it was constructed according to two different architectural plans. Thus, both sides of the building totally differ in style, giving the building an assymetric look. What happened was that Stalin, being offered two different projects signed between the two. The architects, not wanting to have Stalin explain his decision, decided to follow what seemed to be his instructions, to construct the Hotel following both plans. At the time, it was a matter of life and death if the dictator's decisions were questionned...
For more info check out http://www.photonet.org.uk/sections.pl5?section=programme