What are these photographs about? Why were they taken? Who are they for?
I started “taking” photographs as a schoolboy in 1963 and ended my youthful experiments in 1966, when I entered the Aeronautic Institute, never thinking I would return to this way of seeing the world.
The next bit seems like a cliché! When my son Vadim was born, I tried taking some photos with the old Voigtländer 6x9cm, which had a hole in the mechanism that I covered up with some black paper tape. I developed the film, and oddly enough, everything worked out well. From that moment on I developed a serious addiction to photography - I simply become obsessed with the way the world looked through a lens and flattened as a photographic print.
All around me there suddenly seemed to be photoclubs and camera shops which carried the bigger, flashier “Salyut” camera. I walked past these shops and looked at the cameras drooling with envy... And so, I joined the “Novator photo club” and met serious guys with their Hasselblads and Nikons, but my heart was set on the brilliance of the “Salyut”. My mind did not rest. Years later I can understand that the Salyut was not suited to my photographic style (my interest has always been in the moment rather than in staged studio portraits) but the dream that one day I would shoot with this miracle object totally absorbed my imagination. I finally bought a “Salyut” and two lenses, one wide-angle and one for portraits, at a consignment shop on Sadovaya (a big street in Moscow).
There was no money left over to buy other cameras and I started actively photographing on the streets of Moscow and other cities with this wide-angle camera. I also shot sports events, developing the skill to photograph in difficult conditions with an unsuitable camera.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the photographs worked, their quality improved, and I started bringing the pictures to the editorial offices of Moscow newspapers and taking part in photography competitions. The papers began printing my photographs, even awarding me a few prizes - that´s how I justified spending money on film and photo paper. There was a camaraderie at the newspaper offices where strong drinks played a part. They gave me the right little bits of paper with the correct stamps stating I was a freelance photojournalist for “Gudok” and “Komsomolskaia Pravda”.
At that time, those bits of paper opened all the doors, and I could shoot anywhere without problems, during the Soviet years officials really didn´t like photography. They didn´t trust it... or photographers.
In response I decided I would shoot a series of portraits of normal people in provincial towns; not for the papers or for publication, but simply for myself. I confess that I did think about an exhibition at the “Novator photo club”, of which I was still an active member. I shot this series between 1974 and 1980. I took many photographs, actively printing, looking, thinking, drinking, reprinting, talking. My goal was to make an exhibition, to share the things I saw. The exhibition never happened. I have exhibited some of the images in Bochum, Chicago, Madrid, London and elsewhere.
From 1980 on I started using different cameras, taking different types of images, and I forgot about this series for 40 years. Now, these images have been polished by history, they have new meanings, and they look different since the fall of the Soviets. They show a different world, a world that has long gone and been replaced with a global digital connectivity. But it seems to me that they haven´t lost anything photographically. Perhaps, with the experience I now have in developing and printing, they have even acquired new visual possibilities, new potential. Hopefully, they will talk directly to a new audience.
Text: Boris Savelev
Voice: Peter Lee
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