People of the light

Art Project People of the Light is a story told through photographs in honour of RusHydro’s10th anniversary. It is a story of the people behind the Russian hydro power industry. During the course of the 2014 jubilee year, 52 segments, one each week, were posted on www.ludi-sveta.ru.

The stories tell about the people, whose labour gives light and warmth to cities and villages, whose labour allows for factories and construction sites to function. They tell of creations of people of the light — unique dams and hydro power stations, reservoirs and river locks. And the scale of these objects are of no importance, all of them are equally significant and fascinating — be it the story of the tiny Kurushskaya HPP, lost in the mountains of Dagestan or the story of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, which is thirteen times more powerful than the baby Kurushskaya.

The refrain that ties all the stories together is that the main asset of RusHydro are it’s people. Without them, even the most modern equipment and the most advanced of technologies would be dead and useless. That is why human fate is at the root of the project.

The people are not divided into categories as ordinary or important, together all of them make a successful team. To the viewers, it is equally interesting to find out the story behind the living legend of the RusHydro Chief Technical Inspector Valentin Stafievskiy, or the story of Sergei and his dog Lucy, who keep an eye on the substation in the middle of the Magadan Region wilderness, hundreds of kilometers away from civilization. Each segment consists of dozens of brightly coloured expressive photographs, accompanied by text. Famous Russian masters of photography traveled far and wide across Russia, from Kamchatka to the North Caucasus, and caught on camera the every day life of those who work at hydro power plants. Of course, they could not pass over the diverse and unique Russian nature — the great Siberian rivers, taiga and mountains, the Kamchatka volcanoes.

People of the Light is a product of collaboration. Having had such well-known photographers as Sergei Ponomarev, Dmitry Kostyukov, Elena Chernyshova, Yuri Kozyrev, Mitya Aleshkovsky, Oksana Yusko and others take part in the project, made it possible to increase the audience volume. The People of the Light exhibition at the Multimedia Art Museum is a step out of virtual reality into the actual reality, when the visitor is literally inside the project, when digital images become photographs and slide shows, and the text becomes an audio recording.

After the exhibition in Moscow, People of the Light will be shown throughout Russia. The best works will become a part of the People of the Light photo album.