Karaim Cemetery 2001

Arsen Savadov made this photograph, Karaim Cemetery. It has a muted palette – autumnal browns, stone greys. This feels so appropriate: a graveyard is a place where colours slowly leach away. Here, the artist plays with layering, interweaving the natural with the monumental. The flock of sheep are so alive, and yet they wander among these ancient grave stones, these memorials to the dead. Look at the way the verticals of the tree trunks echo the upright markers of the graves. And then the horizontals of the sheep resting echo the fallen leaves on the forest floor. Even the textures, the rough bark of the trees, the coarse fleece of the animals and the pitted stone of the monuments all seem to converse. There's a bit of Gerhard Richter in this photograph, in the way that the focus pulls and blurs, adding a sense of mystery. Savadov reminds us that the conversation between past and present, living and dead, is ongoing.