Description: Peter Grunwald, a statistician at the Dutch Center of Mathematics and Computer Science, calculated that over 107 billion people were born on Earth throughout human history. If we are to trust those numbers and to factor in the 7 billion people currently living on the planet earth, then we can conclude that throughout time more than 100 billion people have been born and died on planet Earth.
Time whisked away the images of most of the former inhabitants of our planet, capturing only a a select few. At different times, the visual memory of the dead was preserved by way of death masks and funerary portraits in painting or in sculpture. With the advent of daguerreotype and photography itself, capturing an image for posterity became easier than ever, and by the twentieth century a culture of grave photo imagery emerged in force. This new form photography often manifests as enameled oval plaques at the site of the grave; however, these enamel images are not durable — these images fade in the sun, wash away in the rain, or simply disappear with time. As the years go, a new image replaces the lost photographs — an image created by the elements.
Billions of the departed didn’t leave their images behind. The Last Portrait is a monument to all mankind.
Alexander Terebenin January 22, 1959, Leningrad, USSR - June 17, 2021, St. Petersburg.
Graduated from the Architectural College in Leningrad. A professional artist and photographer, Terebenin also created art objects and installations. He participated in over 70 exhibitions in Russia and internationally. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the Kolodzei Art Foundation (New York, USA), as well as in galleries and private collections in Russia, the United States, Israel, Germany, Finland, and other countries.
Terebenin curated several art projects, including The Conversion (St. Petersburg, 2012) and The Signal (St. Petersburg, 2014). In collaboration with artist Petr Belyi, he was nominated for the Innovation Prize — Russia’s most prestigious contemporary art award — for Best Curatorial Project of 2014.
“My interest in ruin and deconstruction appeared at the very beginning of my work in photography. I’m drawn to a certain sharpness and pain in these images, to the unexpectedly emerging graphic and color compositions — abstract or even surreal.
Over time, the growing number of images allowed me to group them into cycles and series. When I enter a new space, I almost automatically identify the objects and angles that demand to be captured.
Instead of the shame or disgust that these subjects often evoke in the average person, I experience a sense of delight and aesthetic satisfaction. This is not a perversion, but a way to see — and to show others — a broader spectrum of the Beauty that surrounds us.”
A. Terebenin
