The name PhotoVisa suggests that the event is a means by which to enter inside the world of photography to be a part of that world and not simply a tourist or passive spectator. It is this above all that marks out this festival for its openhearted warmth, aesthetic vigour, and intelligent enthusiasm for the medium. For the involvement that leads to understanding is inevitably an involvement with other people, with other minds and spirits, with new ideas, fresh discourses, and things to be learned. The great achievement of PhotoVisa is to understand that a festival of photography is also about people: about how they relate to each other as much as how they relate to the images on display. However, the festival event is really only possible because of the hard work of many volunteers who return each year to undertake many of the jobs necessary to run such an ambitious festival to an international standard. They are supported by a small staff with offices in both Moscow and Krasnodar. Irina Chmyreva is the Artistic Director of the festival and Mashа Goldman, a founding member of Viva Photo, is Director of Foreign Programs, with Tatiana Zubkova, the Executive Director, and Evgeny Berezner as the overall head of the organisation. Working with the respected curator and art historian at the Russian Academy of Fine Art in Moscow, Irina Chmyreva, they established one of Russia’s most important photography festivals. PhotoVisa was initiated by a group of local photographers who took the name Viva Photo. In Krasnodar, a city in the south-west of Russia close to the eastern shores of the Black Sea, there is a photography festival which is both driven by, and made possible through, this very philosophy. The Chinese proverb captures a profound truth about the human mind and the human spirit: we are participators at heart, not simply spectators. It is important when discussing the art of photography to recognise that real enjoyment arises from being within the processes and discourses of art and not outside simply observing or being told what to think.
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