Description

Number Of Pages: 132

Dimensions: 28 × 22 × 1.5 cm

Languages: English

Publisher: Published in Tbilisi

Year Published: 2019

Cover: Softcover

 

Short Description: This landmark photobook brings to light the long-hidden work of Armenian‑Georgian photographer Vigen Vartanov (1941–2016), showcasing 132 pages of his richly layered black‑and‑white imagery. Created between 1965 and 1975, his photographs blend surreal collage techniques, double and multi‑negative exposures, and poetic still‑lives to reveal haunting psychological spaces and urban landscapes of Tbilisi. Printed posthumously after decades in storage, the collection offers a dreamlike visual journey into Soviet-era everyday realism, revived with renewed resonance.

 

Artist Bio: Vigen Vartanov was a self‑taught Armenian‑Georgian photographer born and based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Working from 1967 at Georgia‑Film studio, he borrowed cameras and a shared darkroom while privately pursuing his artistic photography multi‑exposure negatives, solarization, and surreal assemblages rooted in found objects. His work remained unpublished during his life, largely because it didn’t conform to Soviet socialist‑realist aesthetics.

Only after his passing did his family recover and print his negatives. His first solo exhibition, The Art of Found Objects, was in Tbilisi in May 2019, accompanied by this photobook – the first comprehensive release of Vartanov’s visionary photographic work.