Joseph Brodsky, Leningrad

by Mikhail Lemkhin

To anyone who was fortunate enough to know Brodsky, either personally or through his poetry and prose, it is apparent that among the things he loved, the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) occupied a special place. The photographs that inhabit Joseph Brodsky, Leningrad, taken by Mikhail Lemkhin during the course of twenty-five years, are connected not by chronology or geography but by ties of association. Conceived as a photo-poem, with the inner life of each image reflected in the next, these pages emerge as a unique portrait in which the boundary between the collective and individual psyche is blurred. The result is a stunning array of visual "phrases" that unite this collection of 186 black-and-white photographs into a single voice.