Russian photography at Dave's

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Shanidze says all three photographers want to provoke emotion — any emotion. His own images include a Mapplethorpe-y crouching bare-breasted woman in a leather semiswimsuit and a series featuring a shaved-head nude with piercings wearing a big silver spider pendant and a see-through blouse. These images raise tired questions about pornography versus art but don't have much emotional content — the ladies seem clinical and cold. One exception is a Madonna parody in which the pierced model cradles a stuffed bear to her breast.

Similar whimsy is seen in a shot Shanidze took on the fly when visiting Safian for a show of Safian's work in his adopted home of London, Ontario (the three photographers met via a photography website — "an Internet success story," Shanidze dryly comments). En route to the show, the friends were fooling around with some outdoor shots. When they stumbled on an interesting stairwell, Shanidze whipped out an accordion he happened to have handy and Safian hammed it up. Dead End resulted — a view of a motley fool accordioning away in a trash-littered stairwell. The shot suggests a street entertainer's desperate life, or, more universally, a world deaf to an individual's statement. Or, less universally, a wacky artist loving up a squeezebox in an Ontario stairwell — that's enough for me. It works.