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Capturing Soviet Sensations on Film
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17097 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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12 / 1990 |
2,543 Words |
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Cathy Young
Cathy Young is author of Growing Up in Russia. |
Until very recently, says Boris Savelev, the common view in the West was that there was no such thing as Soviet photography. Except, of course, for the ubiquitous smiling workers and collective farmers, feisty Young Pioneers, and noble mothers in the Soviet press. Indeed, the only area of the Soviet Union where serious photographic societies existed was the Baltic, Lithuania in particular - and there, too, the view prevailed that Russians were simply incapable of being good photographers, and hat there were no real photographers in Moscow.
"Perhaps, to a degree, there weren't," says Savelve's wife, Elena Darikovich, "until you and I came along…"
Tall, sinewy 42-year-ld Savelev is living proof that a different kind of Soviet photography does exist. His passion for photography goes back to his school years. Although he attended the Aviation Institute and worked as an engineer, in 1982 he abandoned that career to become a full-time photographer. He headed the amateur Moscow Photo Club, and worked as a free-lance photographer - making portraits, taking pictures of artists' works (it was "very boring," he says, but he was able to remain faithful to his principles). Darikovich, a slender, elegant, rather bohemian woman in her late thirties, who considers herself primarily a painter, eventually came to share her husband's calling. She had been interested in photography before, working in a photo lab and studying just about the only magazine with quality photography available in the Soviet Union, The Czech Review.
The 'Underground'
Savelev and
... (1992 of 15155 Characters)
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