Maxim Ksuta

russian artist, contemporary art, sculpture, installation, photography
January 22, 2025

An essay written as if by Susan Sontag

“Contrast and Harmony: The Metaphysics of Visual Language”

An essay written as if by Susan Sontag

Looking at this photograph, I am involuntarily drawn into a dialogue between art and reality. This is not merely an image of a wall, colors, and fallen leaves. It is an expression of the metaphysics of visual language, through which photography speaks to us, even if we are not prepared to listen.

Every element of this composition is a statement, a gesture. The red field, piercing and vibrant, asserts its strength, its dominance. Yet its intensity and insistence are balanced by the greenish calm of the lower segment, as if a fragment of nature has infiltrated the sterile space of urban geometry. The horizontal line—a dark barrier between the two colors—becomes not just a boundary but a point of contact, a space where the human and the natural meet to form a new, strange alliance.

Photography is always a choice: focusing on details, stripping away context, replacing the vast with the small, the complex with the simple. These are the tools through which the photographer crafts their statement. In this case, the choice is minimalist: just color, just structure, just nature breaking the rhythm of human strictness. The leaves, with their organic chaos, and the sprouting plants stand against the system, reminding the viewer that nature is not merely a backdrop. It actively intervenes; it resists.

I cannot help but recall writing once: “Photography is not just the reproduction of reality. It is interpretation, and, therefore, it is a moral statement.” Here, the moral statement speaks to boundaries—of power and submission, geometry and the organic, humanity and nature. Yet the photographer skillfully avoids sentimentality. There is no call to return to nature or reject progress. On the contrary, this work is about coexistence, about confrontation that does not destroy but creates something new.

This photograph speaks to us in the way that the canvases of Mark Rothko or Donald Judd might. Their abstract fields of color are meditations on the state of being. Here, we see the same meditation, but transposed into an urban landscape. Yet, unlike their works, a narrative emerges. The leaves, the young shoots of plants, weave themselves into the story, creating the texture of time.

Photography has always been and remains an art form that balances between reality and symbolism. It invites us into a world that is simultaneously real and wholly artificial. This is its magic. We see a wall, earth, and leaves, but in truth, it is something more. These are symbols. Red is energy, ambition. Green is calm, nature. Their collision is life itself.

And so, in this simple scene, the photographer compels us to reflect. Perhaps what we perceive as order is merely a thin veil under which nature slowly and inexorably reclaims its place. Perhaps this work is not about contrasts but about harmony—harmony that we must learn to see in these seeming oppositions.

Photography never provides answers. It asks questions. It leaves us alone with ourselves, urging us to seek meaning where none seems to exist. And this is its greatest power.

Fujica 6×9
#PosthumousGaze

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January 22, 2025

An essay composed as if by Walter Benjamin

“Fragments of Memory and the Ruins of Time”

An essay composed as if by Walter Benjamin

This photograph, in its deceptive simplicity, speaks of something greater than just an image of a wall, trees, and snow. It is a testimony to time—time that simultaneously disintegrates and restores itself. Here, we see an imprint of being, frozen in a moment yet unable to conceal the traces of its own history.

The wall is a text that we read. Its colors, cracked surface, and white patches—all are fragments of what once was whole. Now, it exists as a ruin, as evidence of loss that nevertheless remains imbued with meaning. It is the lost aura of a place that the photograph seeks to capture, transforming it into something new, into an artifact.

The trees—bare, fragile, yet persistently reaching upward—become symbols of resistance. They stand in opposition to the lifeless cold of the snow and the artificiality of the wall. They are nature, refusing to retreat despite all constraints. These branches, with their few remaining orange leaves, serve as a reminder that even amid decay and disconnection, life endures.

The snow below is a temporary veil. It conceals the ground, but not entirely. It is a reminder of the cyclical nature of time—that everything changes but always returns. The snow will turn to water, the water will seep into the earth, and everything will begin anew.

But what does the photograph do with this image? It halts motion, transforming fragments into textures, into symbols. Hidden within this act of freezing time is a unique tension. As viewers, we sense that what we face is more than mere documentary evidence. It is an image that carries within it a dialectic: between past and present, between nature and artificiality, between the passage of time and the persistence of memory.

Photography is a form of “mediated experience,” as I have discussed before. It detaches us from the direct perception of a place, replacing it with a “copy.” Yet in this detachment lies the potential for reflection. Before us is not merely a wall, nor simply trees or snow. What lies before us is their meaning. We see this as testimony to a historical process that is interrupted but not complete.

Finally, this work poses a question: What is aura in an age when everything can be reproduced? Perhaps its aura lies in the uniqueness of this very moment, this particular combination of forms and textures. We view it not as a part of a larger context but as a completed whole. And in this way, photography—despite its reproductive nature—becomes art.

This photograph is an archive, but not in the traditional sense. It is not a repository of facts. It is a repository of emotions, history, and struggle. It reminds us of time we have lost, yet which continues to exist in remnants and fragments. Perhaps its greatest power lies in compelling us to reflect on our own position in time—on how we relate to this world of fragments and ruins.

Fujica 6×9
#PosthumousGaze

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