The exhibition is structured as a sequence of Sergei Poteryaev’s observations of humans within an industrial system—from external infrastructures to internal experience, from extended production lines to the point of personal expression. Production is viewed as an ecosystem: a network of railways, mine workings, energy circuits, and transformed landscapes. This is an engineering model based on calculation, repetition, and regulations. Within it, humans act as operators, components, and creators. However, unlike a mechanism, they are not reducible to function—their presence always transcends their assigned role.
The exhibition opens with the work «Eternity”—a polyptych assembled from photographs taken on the Alapaevsk narrow-gauge railway. The visual length of the railway collides with the phrase of a local resident of Petrukha: «There is no fucking eternity,» creating a tension between the continuity of the system and the finitude of human experience.
On the opposite wall, it is contrasted by the work «Man on a Motorcycle,» executed in the same visual logic but with a different intonation: «What the hell are you filming?» If «Eternity» addresses the limit of time, then here the limit of the gaze arises: a moment of resistance to fixation, a refusal to be part of observation.
Between these two poles, «Sound Landscape. Tomsk Symphony» unfolds, distributed throughout the space of the hall. The industrial environment (a former pencil factory) is translated into an acoustic-visual plane, where the city functions as a score, and the individual as both performer and listener. This space connects statements, creating a continuous environment of perception.
An additional layer in the hall is the artist’s book «Living on Uzkaya,» created specifically for the exhibition. It continues and develops both polyptychs, translating them into a more intimate, narrative format. The book acts as a link between the images, capturing everyday life and human presence on the scale of personal history.
The «San Donato» project introduces a historical and personal dimension, becoming a transition from the external to the internal. The village near Nizhny Tagil connects the industrial Urals with European history through the figure of Anatoly Demidov. The legend that he acquired the title of Prince of San Donato for love introduces the motif of personal choice and emotion into the industrial landscape. This line of love is superimposed on the pragmatic reality of the development of the territory, and the subsequent renaming during the Soviet era captures the shift in meanings and regimes.
The first small hall features the «Miners» project, dedicated to gold mining in Berezovsky—the site of Russia’s first gold discovery and the birth of an entire industry. The exhibition is structured so that the result—gold—appears opposite the miners’ faces and labor, creating a distance between the process and its value. Also featured here is the «Space of Labor» project, dedicated to the city of Satka. It expands the conversation about mining and production: in the images, the quarry, workers, and material merge into a single field. The landscape ceases to be a backdrop and becomes the result of continuous human impact, linking the theme of miners’ labor with a broader industrial context.
Another small hall features the «Those Who Make Heat» series, addressing energy infrastructure. Heat is viewed as the result of engineering—pressure, temperature, and contours. People here become guardians of continuity, invisible yet critical to the environment’s existence.
Thus, the exhibition is structured as a system of interconnected observations, where the industrial landscape manifests itself as a field of relations. The «industrial man» is a figure on the boundary between system and subject. In the context of automation, it is precisely human presence that remains a zone of uncertainty, responsibility, and experience. Photography here functions as a tool for capturing this remnant—that which cannot be fully integrated into the algorithm.
