Compositie van veertien foto's van personen en het gebouw van de Keizerlijke Militair-Medische Academie, gecombineerd met decoratie van gedroogde takken 1913

V. Sabel'skij created this composition of fourteen photographs with dried branches, a dimensional collage of sorts. It’s like a memory palace made visual. The sepia tones give it a feeling of something remembered, not quite real, and in that way, so much like a dream. The photographs are documentary – portraits, group shots, the Imperial Military Medical Academy – and yet the overall effect is surreal because of the odd combination of the photos and the branches. It’s as if Sabel’skij is not only showing us the Academy, but also alluding to something about it, maybe how it feels to be there. Look at the way the dried branches crawl across the composition. The textures and shadows they create are unpredictable. This organic element contrasts with the rigid order of the photographs. This tension, between the real and unreal, the representational and the abstract, makes me think of Man Ray. Like Man Ray, Sabel’skij embraces the unexpected.