John Peter Askew, Young Man Preparing Meal 2008
with an essay by Elena Zaytseva
This large photograph was to be the first the visitor encountered at Pushkin House — it is hung in the lobby opposite the entrance door. From there, the visitor could either descend into the dark hall of the basement to watch the slideshow, or go upstairs to see the bright display of photographs, thoughtfully arranged by the artist in response to the architecture of the building. Each exhibition is a kind of a journey, but ‘We’ is an almost literary journey around the House. Pushkin House was built in 1744, with large, elegant Georgian sash windows in the main first floor room, and a gently sweeping staircase ascending to an atrium on the second floor. All this is far from the conventional ‘white cube’ of a gallery.
Every artist or curator exhibiting here faces the dilemma of whether to work against the nature of the space or comfortably accept its fabric. John Peter Askew has chosen the latter, as he treats the building with consideration, gently posing his playful interventions which unravel while moving around the House.
This journey begins with the ‘Young Man Preparing Meal’, whose message particularly resonates today. Cooking for the family and sharing food is currently one of the few pleasures available to us, locked in our houses during these bright spring days, overshadowed by the coronavirus emergency.
A young man prepares food al fresco in a sunlit summer garden; on the back of his neck and shoulder is reflected a lacy shadow pattern cast by what appears to be vine leaves. He smiles while chopping vegetables and distributing them between ceramic plates, crowded on the table. There are three children in the background, chatting and waiting for the food to be ready. This looks like the typical scene of an afternoon meal on the veranda of a dacha, the summer house that many urban Russians have.
And yet there is something more in this photograph than just the scene of a simple family ritual. Why vine leaves? Why twelve plates? Do they hint at certain passages of the Bible; or it is just a coincidence? In my mind the three heads are tilted towards each other in a perfect semicircular arc. Are they reminiscent of an icon of the Holy Trinity (a compulsory part of any Russian church)? You never know with a photographer like John Peter Askew.
But what is the Communion if not sharing food with those we love? It is one of the oldest and most powerful ways of sharing love and friendship. My 82 year old mother-in-law, self isolating in her London home, finds comfort in cooking fancy dishes and bringing them to the doors of her favourite neighbours. She is trying the complicated recipes she said she had always wanted to try but didn’t have the time before. And I too can’t restrain myself from sharing some food, at least in the form of a recipe.
The man in the photograph is cooking ‘okroshka’, a much-favoured dish of dacha life. Here is a recipe for okroshka by my late mother Lora Zaytseva.
Okroshka
Feeds 6-8
5 eggs, hard boiled
5 medium size potatoes, boiled in skins and peeled
2 large cucumbers, chopped in small cubes
200g of ham, chopped in small cubes
one large bunch of spring onion, chopped
one bunch of parsley
one bunch of dill
one bunch of coriander
one clove of garlic, finely chopped
1.5 litres of ‘kvas’, which is a sour-sweet fermented bread drink, like non-alcoholic beer — you can use diet cola or even cider for slightly averted version; fizzy water would do as well.
250 ml of crème fraîche
a pinch of salt
black pepper, grated
Chop all the solid ingredients into small pieces about 1 cm long. Mix them in a large bowl, add salt and pepper and distribute into individual plates. Pour kvas into each plate and add one or two tbs of creme-fraiche, stir and enjoy.
Elena Zaytseva
Elena Zaytseva is the curator of Pushkin House’s exhibition, ‘We. Photographs from Russia 1996-2017’ by John Peter Askew.