‘Vremya Kolokolchikov' (Time of the Little Bells)

Until Mar. 10 at The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, www.lumiere.ru

“Time of the Little Bells,” a new exhibit at Lumiere Brothers, brings viewers back to the 1980s, when Russian rock came of age, revealing the vibrant underground culture that burst out of the shadows with the dawn of perestroika.

The period produced legendary groups such as Akvarium, Kino and Alisa. It was centered around the rock scene in Leningrad and one of the first rock clubs to be allowed to open in the Soviet Union.

© Courtesy of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography

The exhibit takes its name from a song by Alexander Bashlachyov, a cult poet and singer-songwriter of that period, whose work is seen as encapsulating the spirit of the '80s rock community.

It features dozens of photographs, mostly taken in the mid-to late '80s, that provide a tour of Russian rock greats who, as one paper noted, have given us joy and disappointed us ever since.

“We tried to achieve some balance between photos that have become iconic,” curator Yekaterina Zuyeva said, “and those that photographers [just] picked out of their archives for the first time in 30 years.”

One iconic photo, taken by legendary photographer Igor Mukhin, shows Oleg Garkush, the showman of rock group Auktsyon, standing on a street corner in 1986. He is tall and skinny, with an umbrella in one hand and a nervous look the other way – a rock alien in a Soviet town.

Other shots show the youth of now-aging rock giants DDT, Akvarium and Alisa, as well as the cast of characters that gathered round them such as Joanna Stingray, the young American musician who found herself at the center of this rock revolution. Stingray smuggled music by underground bands out of the Soviet Union so they could be released in the West.

© Courtesy of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography

The blossoming of Soviet rock in the '80s was not only a cultural, but also a social and political phenomenon. Some say it helped to put the last nails in the coffin of the Soviet system.

With little opportunity to release records legally or play concerts, few of those involved had the kind of success they might have had in the West.

“It's sad. The guys who were involved in that movement had huge potential,” said photographer Valery Potapov, whose works are included in the exhibit. “But on the other hand, they made history.”

Bashlachyov did not even see the new Russia, killing himself in 1988.

The photographs are complemented by old posters, sleeves from the first LPs released in the USSR, fanzines and non-stop screenings of documentaries chronicling the period, such as the 1988 film “Rock” by director Alexei Uchitel, which features all of the main characters of that time.

The gallery also has a series of concerts and performances lined up over the course of the exhibit's run.