with an essay by Turner Ruggi

Directly in the foreground is a large family of two adults and eight little children feasting around a clutch of assorted outdoor furniture — a simple pine-box table, metal-frame benches, an enormous and solidly built round table that seems fashioned from a tree-trunk — surrounding plentiful bowls of food and cups of drink. The sun-kissed group, the Chukalov family, is bright with the blues, reds and pinks of the children’s clothes and, we imagine, alive with sound: the mealtime chatter, the clinking of plates, the giggles of the children. A tambourine hangs from an extension of the table, suggesting music too sometimes fills this gathering place.

The simplicity and liveliness of the family first captures our attention, but soon the eye wanders further into the domestic landscape around them. Behind, a strange ensemble of semi-permanent structures: an above-ground bright blue plastic pool, an empty trampoline, a makeshift washing station, and an unexplained wooden frame — perhaps the edge of a simple swing set, for the children? A mysterious electric wire is inexplicably suspended in the air, like a thin frame enclosing this peaceful place, this ordinary day. Somewhat incongruously, dominating all in the distant background, stands a blue-domed stone church, hovering and inserting its unmistakable presence in the clear white sky.

There is a stark contrast in John Peter Askew’s Picnic between the temporary and the constant. The make-shift lunch, the wooden-frame structures, the pool and trampoline to amuse growing children: none of these amenities are there to last forever. They are transportable, subject to the seasons, open to perpetual change. Their imprint on the landscape is casual and brief, not needing to build foundations and force their presence indelibly on the land. The impression is that this family occupies the earth lightly, enjoying the space without imposing themselves excessively: this is plainly their home, but they seem also polite guests briefly occupying their patch of Earth. In contrast, looming behind is the thick, stony permanence of the Orthodox Church: a pillar of stability at odds with this literal moveable feast. Some of the very earliest maps of central Russia, dating back to the 17th century and the times of serfdom, already show a landscape dotted everywhere with churches erected among peasant homes and farms. The heavy-built curved domes and powerful walls point towards a fixture in Russian history and tradition – a force that has lasted the changes of many long centuries.

No one seems aware of the photographer’s presence, no one turns to notice him, allowing the artist to sensitively capture this untouched, passing moment. Having known the Chukalov family for two decades, Askew creates no stir in his photos. His project is plainly not to draw attention to drama or conflict but to offer a glimpse into the joys of everyday life. Throughout his work, Askew makes a point of not posing his subjects. As the writer and scholar Alistair Robinson has described, Askew “knows that only art is able to capture the fleeting, variegated texture of lived experience”. Askew’s picture of the family set in the broad frame of their immediate landscape allows the picture to fill with multiple textures: the many shades and finishes of wood round the mighty central table; the rich meadow and tall green grass; the braids and curls of hair; the weathered wood on either side of the family; the almost-transparent silvery trampoline netting; the soft sheeting and hard plastic edges of the pool; and the strange wire that runs across the top of the picture, like a scrawled line drawn in the sky above.

Immersion in the everyday lives of the Chukalovs inevitably resulted in the photographer capturing similar everyday scenes of Russian life. An analogous image is observed in Women and Children Outdoors 2000: here, nine members of a family rest jovially in a garden and patio space. A blanket on the ground is occupied by the youngest two, a baby and toddler, and there is a great diversity of ages, up to an elderly lady sitting protectively over the smallest ones. A triple gold-domed church once again stands starkly in the background, its gleaming solid onion-domes a contrast to the light wooden tracery of the carved porticos where the women and children sit, relaxed and smiling. The remarkable similarity between these two prints – warm domestic surroundings filled with delighted children; a towering age-old Christian structure, unmoving at the back – suggest to the viewer that this two-tiered setting forms the perpetual backdrop to Russian rural life.

Picnics and, more generally, family meals — their preparation; enjoyment; and chaotic remains — take a special place in Askew’s collection, from Autumn Lunch 1996 to Picnic Remains 2009. Robinson explains the importance of mealtimes in Askew’s imagery: “the points in the day at which the entire family becomes one unit, and we feel a powerful sense of togetherness”. People of all ages gathering around plates of food seems to be forming close bonds before our eyes. It would not be unfair to consider a kind of religiosity here, not least because of the domed church the seems silently to inflate and float behind them. Askew’s perspective lines up these figures almost in a straight row — despite being seated round a circular table — creating a Last Supper-like tableaux. These meals are moments of unity, almost a micro-sacrament.

Anton Chekhov’s 1891 play The Duel describes at one point a family gathering outdoors to share a meal with the ‘religious solemnity … only done at a picnic’. Possibly, this connection between faith and food comes from churches being so commonplace in a rural Russia: as everyday as a picnic. The Duel centres on a contrast between the strictly disciplined local Von Koren and the louche outsider Laevsky, who eventually grows tired of the landscape, exclaiming ‘the damned mountains!... how sick I am of them’. The family depicted in Askew’s photo seem fully to belong and enjoy their world, as settled within the natural landscape as with the institutions that surround them.

Another literary association between Russia and picnics may be Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s stunning 1972 sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic (adapted in Andrei Tarkovsy’s classic film, Stalker, 1979). The novel’s lighthearted title deliberately runs counter to the Zone’s dark, hostile landscape. In Askew’s imagery we seem to find exactly the landscape suggested and then denied in the Strugatskys’ dark tale: not a place permanently tainted by the past but a welcoming, liveable, green arcadia, able to coexist peacefully with the silent histories layered behind it.

Turner Ruggi

Turner Ruggi was shortlisted for the 2019 Young Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. This Picture of the Week is taken from the current Pushkin House exhibition, ‘We. Photographs from Russia 1996-2017’ by John Peter Askew.

John Peter Askew, Picnic 2017

with an essay by Turner Ruggi