DiDi Gallery has opened an exhibition by the legendary nonconformist photographer Valentin Samarin.

The art of SANKI, as the artist defines it, is the mystery of old silver photography, the metamorphosis of energetic projections invisible in normal photography, the metaphysics of the projections of Light and Shadow in the human spiritual world. The word "sanki" itself is borrowed from "Sens-Energetika" (1974), a book by Moscow University professor N. Kvashura on ancient Chinese philosophy. This concept reveals the phenomenon of invisible energetic potentials of Time and Space that determine our earthly existence.

Valentin Samarin:

"It all started with my mother, Helen (as she was called at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens), and my father, Prokhor. I was born in 1928 in St. Petersburg-Leningrad on Gogol Street, which is now Malaya Morskaya, near St. Isaac's Cathedral. He is my greatest secret. And the cathedral, and Gogol. Or perhaps it all began with the secret of two beautiful ladies: the Queen of Spades (Countess Golitsyna), whose mansion is across from my house at number 12, and the secret of my grandmother Feodosia, who used to take me for walks in the Alexander Garden. I was a child prodigy: 7th, 8th, and 9th grade in the same year, and 10th in the same academic year. An eternal student: six unfinished universities. It was in one of them, the Physics and Mathematics Department of Leningrad University, that my SANKI began".