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Photo workshop. Persons

Portfolio of the famous Soviet and Russian photojournalist Igor Gavrilov, who shot for Ogonyok, the American TIME, the German FOCUS, who devoted more than 40 years to his difficult profession ...

From the biography of Igor Gavrilov. Born in 1952 in Moscow. In 1970, ending high school, became the winner of the All-Union competition among school graduates and received the right to non-competitive admission to the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
In 1975-1988 works as a full-time photojournalist for Ogonyok magazine. In 1988, he moved to the American Time as a Moscow correspondent. Nominated for title Best Photographer of the year" from Time magazine. From the late 90s to 2010, he was a photojournalist for FOCUS magazine in Russia and the CIS.
Igor spoke about each frame - somewhere in a nutshell, somewhere in detail, and somewhere - with digressions in more common topics. It turned out to be a long and, we hope, interesting conversation, which we offer you in this material. Almost the entire text is Igor Gavrilov's direct speech, the correspondent's remarks begin with "PP".
RR: First, about the red hammer and sickle.
IG: This is the beginning of the 1990s. The shot was taken during, perhaps, my longest business trip. It was a series of reports about the Urals. And we drove by car Southern Urals to the very north, to Ivdel, where I rented a colony for life-sentenced prisoners.
And along the way, we constantly came across such horror stories - that is, the whole country was lined with some completely phantasmagoric monuments Soviet era- these are sickles and hammers, tractors on pedestals, all kinds of Lenins of all sizes and varying degrees of peeling.
Previously, little attention was paid to these monuments, there were a lot of them, and they, most likely, did not carry any semantic load, but were erected according to some kind of idiotic habit. This one, in my opinion, is welded from metal and painted in an eerie red color. This monument is several human heights.

IG: This is Western Ukraine. And the year is most likely some 80s, before perestroika, of course. It's very cute wonderful person. Unfortunately, I don't remember his name. He is a goldsmith - there is a barrel of shit in the back that he carries.
During the war he served in the infantry. And there was a period of such a positional war, when the German trenches were opposite, on this side - our trenches, the soldiers were sitting - it was a hot summer, they didn’t bring water, they didn’t bring food either. But water is more important. And at night, the soldiers crawled in turn to a small, almost dry river, which actually separated the positions of the Germans and Soviet troops.
And the time came for him to crawl - one bowler hat in his teeth, two bowler hats in his arms, a machine gun. He crawls up to the river and sees that from the other side, in exactly the same outfit, only with a different machine gun, a Fritz crawls up, also in the teeth of a bowler hat and two bowler hats in his hands. He says we stopped here by the river, literally five meters between us, we look into each other's eyes, and I begin to fill the pot, lowering it into the water. German then - his own. Then I - two more of my own. And we crawl backwards from each other.
He brought his water. He says he was scared, somehow uncomfortable - either he starts shooting, or I start shooting. And on that day, he swore to himself that if he returned home to the village alive, he would dig wells near the houses of those women who did not return from the war, so that they always had water in the house. And he did.
I came to shoot him when he was digging the last well. And something did not return 20 s superfluous man. That is, in his life he dug more than 20 wells for his fellow villagers. And the picture was taken when he was going somewhere to work, I was also driving somewhere on this shit truck, and we met the party organizer of the collective farm or something ... And so he made some claims to him. Absolutely wonderful person.

I.G.: Revolution Square, Moscow, most likely 70 years… I don’t remember, maybe this shot was even taken when I was still a student – that is, from 71 to 75, I don’t remember exactly when I was still walking and just caught the genre.
And these are the same years when there was nothing to eat in the whole country, despite the fact that five-year plans were fulfilled and overfulfilled, and they threshed twice as much as they promised to thresh, they gave milk and meat, and they sewed shoes, but nowhere was not in stores. But people from the provinces came and for two or three days from dawn to dusk bought up everything that could be bought in the capital, and then left for their homes, giving gifts to relatives and friends.
Retreat
I.G.: I have never worked in news agencies and in newspapers, so I don't have and never had, unfortunately, the habit of fixing the date and place. I have never been an information photographer, it was more important for me to create a certain image of that time or that event, or that person whom I shot. And even in my archive, many envelopes are not marked with dates. For some reason I thought that I would remember everything all my life.
Now everything is simple: I looked at the date on the camera and found out. And I have some problems with it. Therefore, I, unfortunately, can only date pictures for decades ...

I.G.: 70 years. Yakutia, the Lena River is one of my most interesting business trips, which I went on with my friend, a journalist, now a writer and screenwriter Serezha Markov. We were given the ship of the Academy of Sciences, and in a month we traveled on this scientific ship from Yakutsk to Tiksi. Stopping, of course. And they caught taimen, and went to the fishermen.
This is just one of the fishing stations where we were thrown by helicopter, which was also quite easy to do in those years. That is, we got hooked on a helicopter in the morning, in the evening we were taken back to our ship. And this table is what was left after our dinner. The pelvis is from under the black caviar. And the child, since they have problems with toys there, then played with bottles of drunk vodka.

I.G.: 70s, Moscow. Godless alley. Opposite the window where people hand over dishes that have just been washed from the labels in a puddle, there is a Mineralnye Vody store - quite famous in Moscow. In order to hand over the dishes, get money, go opposite and buy wine or beer, which was also sold there, people were engaged in this business.

I.G.: A shot with the most unfortunate fate. I made it again in Western Ukraine, in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, during some kind of youth festival.
And, in general, a fairly large number of foreigners from the socialist camp, many correspondents gathered there. I was walking to the press center from the hotel and saw this scene at the bus stop. Literally clicked twice. Some military man immediately attacked me, began to shout to the whole of Ivano-Frankivsk that I was discrediting Soviet image life, why I shoot disabled people, where did I come from. He literally grabbed my hand so tenaciously and went with me to the press center.
There he began to yell at someone again, looking for the boss. And while he was there rushing about about it, I just went on about my business. In Ogonyok, the frame was not printed, and wherever I offered it, it was not accepted anywhere. And it was only in the late 80s that the magazine "Smena" and the magazine "Journalist" suddenly took it from me.
The winds of perestroika blew out. Everyone wanted to get into these jets, adjust to the wind, including the magazine " Soviet photo”, the editor-in-chief of which in those years was Olga Suslova, the daughter of that very Cardinal Gray Tsekovsky. She decided to hold a meeting of Moscow photographers so that we could express our wishes on how to modernize the Soviet Photo magazine. And before that, I just bought "Change", because I knew that this shot would come out.
Quite a lot - such a full editorial room - of Moscow photojournalists gathered in the "Soviet Photo". For some reason, the floor was given to me first, they said, here you are one of the youngest, come on, speak. And to Suslova’s question, what needs to be done to make the magazine better, and so that nice photos, I took out the Smena magazine from the trunk, opened it and showed it to her, and I say: “Just print such photos.”
And in response I heard: “Igor, where were you before, why didn’t you bring such shots to the Soviet Photo?”. This was told to me by Suslova, who personally uploaded this frame three times with her own hands from collections that were sent to some international photo contests - there is Interpress Photo or World Press Photo. She then spoke rather impartially about this frame, approximately like the military man who grabbed my sleeve in Ivano-Frankivsk. And now I heard "Where have you been? .."

RR: Communal. It looks like a scenery at Mosfilm, where temporary partitions are being built, depicting some kind of life. But you, Igor, say that this real apartment communal. How can it be?
IG: This is a real communal apartment. I don't remember the name of this street, unfortunately. This is the “Kitay-gorod” metro, and this street goes to the Library of Foreign Literature.
RR: Solyanka street.
I.G.: Yes. And if you follow this street from the Moskva River, then this house is on the right, a little in the recess - a huge gray house. Then there were still communal apartments. I think it's the late 80's - early 90's.
I was asked to remove the topic about communal apartments. I was not only in this apartment alone, but strained all my friends who know or have friends who live in communal apartments. But this one completely amazed me - there the ceilings were about six meters, probably. That is, in order to screw in or unscrew a light bulb in the corridor, it was necessary to put up a hefty ladder, they had it, wooden, heavy - just awful. And how these two old women and two or three even more or less young women dragged her there is completely incomprehensible.
In the frame - a large room of one family. There, in the corner, sits a mother, below us is her daughter, very sweet. They simply partitioned off this large room with a plywood partition to somehow separate from each other. But they fenced us not to the ceiling, but to the middle, and therefore it was possible to climb onto this partition, and from there make such a shot. I remember that the dust was not wiped there, I think, half a year or a year, I got down from there all in some kind of cobweb, dust, what the hell.
I.G.: This is Sakhalin, 1974. I went to work as a student photojournalist for a construction team.

In this frame, my friends, classmates. And the person who is holding the legs of someone who is already unclear is Yegor Veren, who is now one of the leaders of Interfax. These guys are laying an electric cable under the heating main, handing over the end to one another.

I.G.: Mid-80s. This is the port of Yamburg, that is, not yet a port, but a place where supports for a portal crane are mounted. The very beginning of Yamburg. The "legs" of the crane are turned upside down here, they are somehow welded, and then put the other way around.
I.G.: The end of the 70s - the beginning of the 80s again.
An example of how a rather boring, at first glance, task turns into an interesting, it seems to me, reportage:
I was sent from the Ogonyok magazine to some region in the village, to film a collective-farm meeting for reporting and re-election.

I arrived there - a dark hall, a small podium. People come out, say something, the collective farmers are sitting in the hall. Women are dressed in the same headscarves, and for all that, most of them are sitting in coats with fox collars.
The men smoke in the waiting room when they announce a break, the smoke is like a yoke - they smoke, they discuss something to themselves. Very interesting faces. For me, it was actually a kind of discovery. I thought that all these meetings are quite simple, that is, official words are read out, then everyone votes, and people disperse.
In fact there boiled enough strong passions- they criticized the chairman of the collective farm, they said that the windows were not inserted in the farm, that the cows were not milked, etc. - that is, it was very interesting and long, this meeting.

But for me, this material was also a professional lesson. Passionate about shooting these wonderful people, I completely forgot about the basic rule of a journalist, especially an information man. The fact that you still need to shoot the place where the event takes place.
I forgot to film the village. That is, the club was rented from me, the porch was rented, but where it is, what it is - it is not clear. And so, when I laid out the material on the tennis table in Ogonyok, where we looked through our materials, ... I was suddenly asked the question: where is the village? "But there is no village." They say, well then, take a ticket, go again, rent a village and come back so that tomorrow evening you will be there.
Well, I got on the train again, took off, returned. And as a result, in the magazine, a frame with a village was printed in a format, in my opinion, 6 by 9 centimeters. Little at all.

RR: Well, this is generally a symbol of the era!
I.G.: Yes, what we lived with is enough long years when a person came to the store and saw completely empty shelves there. This is the early 90s or 89th. And so they lived throughout the country. But this is most likely done in the Urals.

IG: Baikal, one of the islands on this lake. I shot this with my friend Jenz Hartman for the Bild or Die Welt newspaper. The kids, the children of the fishermen, were actually wild, shy, and in order to get in touch with them, I gave them beautiful boxes from under the Kodak film. And for some time the shooting was interrupted. Until I took it all away from them, promising that I would return it later.
Nothing should be given to children until the shooting is finished, especially in poor countries. If you gave someone some candy or money, you better get in a taxi and drive three kilometers away from this place until the children get tired of running after your taxi, otherwise they will strip you from head to toe - you won’t take anything else off.

IG: These are the consequences of the unreasonable leadership of the country. This is Naberezhnye Chelny - the All-Union Komsomol shock construction site. As you know, it was all there in an open field, almost built quickly. That is, Komsomol members, young people from different parts were driven to the construction site Soviet Union in order to build an auto giant by shock methods.
They did this, but in the evenings and nights they did something else, apparently, that is, they met, drank port wine there, played the guitar, sang songs, and then did ding-ding. With a ding-ding, as you know, children are obtained. These children were not always born in families, often just out of love. But they were made for love, and when they were born, Great love could no longer be. Therefore, there were many unsettled children in incomplete families, only with their mothers.
When these kids grew up, they felt the strength, they began to form youth gangs, into courtyards - they fought yard against yard, block against block, district against district, then, city against city. And this has become a very, very strong problem for the police and other bodies - fights, robberies, theft, violence. The Volga region was simply captured by such a gangster youth locust.
It's the mid 80's I think. The Soviet government did not like to talk about it. And so we went with a correspondent to Naberezhnye Chelny, and we got to know these guys. They, in general, did not immediately allow themselves to be filmed and behaved rather defiantly. It was not easy with them: the people are rather unpleasant.

I.G.: Special detention center in Moscow on Altufevsky highway. I shot there several times and each time with great interest. Well, what to say? With a lot of pain - it's too pompous. No, there wasn't much pain. But I feel sorry for the children, I feel sorry for the children.
All those who have run away from home, found at railway stations, somewhere else, on the streets, are gathered there. Someone ran away today or yesterday, they are still more or less clean, their parents come for them, they give them back. And someone came from other regions, has been wandering for a long time.
When they cut this boy’s hair, lice jumped from him, I don’t know, about three meters from him. I barely had time to brush it off, I thought that I myself would get lice all over while I was filming it. The second frame was taken in the same place, during the sanitation.

I.G.: The beginning of the journey to the Pamirs, the beginning of the 80s. This is one of the most difficult business trips. We drove along the road Khorog - Osh, and this road was called the road of death. There are high mountains, 4.5 - 5 thousand meters.
During this business trip, I managed to visit the highest mountain village in our country, in the village of Murghab. Five or something thousand meters, in my opinion. The road - serpentines, cliffs. And the gearbox flew by our car. If not for the border guards...
Everyone there helps each other, because they understand that if you stop on this road for the night, you may not wake up. Because the wind is wild, the temperature is -25 - 30 degrees, while the wind there seems to be - 60 - 70. It's terrible. But it was interesting.

I.G.: Estonia. One of my favorite shots, it's kind of gentle. In any case, the old man carrying wild flowers, I don’t know to whom - maybe he’ll just put it in a vase, maybe he’ll give it to his old wife - it’s touching. I went to the university in Tartu to make a topic, and on Saturday or Sunday I just went to drive along the roads - the roads are deserted, some farms.
I overtook this old man, stopped, got out of the car and took a picture. You always have to stop. No need to be lazy to stop the car for the sake of the frame.

I.G.: This is Domodedovo airport, 1970s. I'm running from the train to the terminal building. The weather was bad, and for a long time the planes did not fly, and therefore all those who did not fly were dispersed around the airport and around. The man simply did not fly away, he is sleeping at the end of this railway "path".

I.G.: This is Victory Day, the year is approximately 76-77. Such a scene was formed on the embankment. I think that the wisest is the one who stands alone in the middle, he does business, drinks beer, eats a sandwich. And they still don't know what they'll do.

IG: This is the future lieutenant, before the first solo flight. Here is his look. The first time the instructor will not be with him, he sits first in the park. This, in my opinion, is the Orenburg flight school or Omsk - in general, in those parts.

I.G.: The end of the 80s. Moscow region. This is a hospital for soldiers, for soldiers who returned from Afghanistan, a rehabilitation hospital. And there were boys like that. A whole hospital - about 500 people who have just returned from there and saw death. They were difficult for the staff.

I.G.: This is the beginning of the 80s. This is the first international competition hairdressers in Moscow, it took place, in my opinion, in the Dynamo sports complex. And these are the contestants, that is, the contestants - in the sense of the contest model, they have their hair dried under this beautiful poster.
The most interesting thing is that this picture was published in the Ogonyok magazine in those years, before perestroika, but somewhat cropped. Lead Artist took out large scissors 20 centimeters long from the office and cut off the poster with the words “what are you, oh ... Gavrilov”.

I.G.: 75th, 76th, maybe years. Kalininsky Prospekt, as it was then called, the store, in my opinion, "Spring". It was forbidden to shoot there, so I had to get permission, of course. Well, for the Ogonyok magazine, this is not a problem at all - they wrote a letter - they allowed me to shoot. I just made a report about the store and at the same time took such a shot here.
RR: Was it published?
IG: No, of course not. Only after perestroika was, of course, published many times and shown at exhibitions. And now, in my opinion, in Houston, perhaps, there was a biennale, here it is also published in the catalog there. This bald man was sold in every store. All officials were required to have it on their desks.

I.G.: The funeral of Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. This is Taganka, opposite the theatre. It was a very difficult day for me, because I loved and love this person very, very much and will always love and respect him, he means a lot to me in life. I think that somehow he made me through his songs and his words, his thoughts.
For some reason, I stood at the coffin in the theater for two hours, probably. Well, I couldn't leave. And the exposure was wrong. And then I went to the square, I saw it all. And only now, literally this year, I realized that in fact the funeral of Vysotsky - and this is the Olympics, the special regime in Moscow - is the first unauthorized rally in the Soviet Union.
RR: Well, not a rally...
I.G.: Well, this is the first nationwide disobedience to that government, when people came - no one convened them, no one drove them, as was done at the demonstrations on November 7 or May 1, when everyone went according to the order. Someone went, yes, and by the will of the heart, to drink vodka in front of Red Square or later there - it was different. But for the most part, it's all a rip-off. And here all of Moscow came to the Taganka Theater.

I.G.: Mid-80s. Kolkhoz market. We came there for a beer case, and at the same time I took such a picture.

I.G.: Late 80s, Yerevan. This is a rally near, in my opinion, the prosecutor's office demanding secession from the Soviet Union, secession from the USSR.
It was quite bloodless there, thank God, it did not work out like in Tbilisi or like in Lithuania. This is interesting from a purely professional point of view: I took such a picture, and my friend and colleague Ruben Mangasaryan was filming with me, he was also behind the chain of soldiers at that moment. But for some reason he took a shot along the arms - he has the same coincidence - arms, arms, but this person is not there. Either journalistic ethics interfered with him, and he did not shoot from behind my back.
In principle, we, the professionals, had this: we did not allow ourselves to take a picture from behind the back of our colleague. Now, in my opinion, they didn’t give a damn about this for a long time, and everyone takes the same shot, sometimes they also hit each other with their elbows.

IG: This is the 90th year. The task of the magazine "Time" to remove the design of the city before November 7th. This is the last November 7 when a communist demonstration took place.
Here it is November 6, 1990 filmed. And the frame was printed in The Times, and then it went into the best photos Years in America is a healthy book, I have it. And the next day there was nothing. That's it, the last demonstration, the last parade. Paragraph…

Pictures with stories from the famous photographer Igor Gavrilov, who has devoted more than 40 years to his difficult profession.

Igor Gavrilov is a living legend of Soviet photojournalism. His work is amazing, each photo is life, not covered up, but caught off guard. Many brilliant pictures of the author were not published at the time just because they were too believable.

For Igor main genre- analytical reporting. The main goal in the work is to photograph the truth, in search of which he traveled all over Russia, worked in 50 foreign countries, photographed in almost all the hot spots of our country, on the seventh day after the explosion he flew over the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Professionalism, great love for his work, and the right principles have made Igor's work significant and internationally recognized. The photographer's photographs have been published in the world's most prestigious publications: Paris Matsh, Le photo, Stern, Spiegel, Independent, Elle, Playboy - and many others. Nominated for Best Photographer of the Year by Time magazine. Winner of the World Press Photo Award.

On March 29, the publication "Russian Reporter" published an article in which 50 frames of the photographer were selected, made by him in various periods of his life - from his student years to very recent trips around the planet. Igor spoke about each picture - somewhere in a nutshell, somewhere in detail, and somewhere - with digressions into more general topics.

It turned out to be a poignant story that makes you look at the photos from a completely different angle.

1. Communal

Late 80s - early 90s. Communal. It looks like a scenery at Mosfilm, where temporary partitions are being built, depicting some kind of life. But this is quite a real apartment.

I was asked to remove the topic about communal apartments. I was not only in this apartment alone, but strained all my friends who know or have friends who live in communal apartments. But this one totally blew me away. In the frame - a large room of one family. There, in the corner, sits a mother, below us is her daughter, very sweet. They simply partitioned off this large room with a plywood partition to somehow separate from each other. But they fenced us not to the ceiling, but to the middle, and therefore it was possible to climb onto this partition, and from there make such a shot. I remember that the dust was not wiped there, I think, half a year or a year, I got down from there all in some kind of cobweb, dust, what the hell.

2. Symbol of the era

What we lived with for quite a long time, when a person came to the store and saw completely empty shelves there. This is the early 90s or 89th.

3. "Where have you been? .."

In Ogonyok, the frame was not printed, and wherever I offered it, it was not accepted anywhere. The editor-in-chief of the Soviet Photo magazine personally uploaded this frame three times from collections that were sent to some international photo contests - Interpress Photo or World Press Photo, accompanying her actions with impartial comments.

The winds of perestroika blew out. A full editorial room of Moscow photojournalists gathered in Sovietsky Photo, the subject of discussion was how to modernize the magazine. I took out this picture with the words: "Just print such photos." And in response I heard: “Igor, where were you before, why didn’t you bring such shots to the Soviet Photo?”

4. Lonely but wise

This is Victory Day, the year is approximately 76-77. Such a scene was formed on the embankment. I believe that the wisest is the one who stands alone in the middle, he does business: he drinks beer, eats a sandwich. And they still don't know what they'll do.

5. Earthquake in Armenia

Lists of people who were found and were able to identify. They hang on the glass - the press center is improvised there in some building - and people come up all the time, read.

When I arrived in Moscow and showed the photographs, Ogonyok gave nominally one spread of fairly calm photographs. And I was in a lot of pain.

I hoped that they would print more photos and stronger ones. And I sent it all to Time, and Time came out with the main reportage of the issue. And they nominated me for this report for the best reporter of the year.

7. First International Hairdressing Competition in Moscow

This is the early 80s. The girls in the picture are models of the competition, they are drying their hair under this beautiful poster. The most interesting thing is that this picture was published in the Ogonyok magazine in those years, before perestroika, but somewhat cropped. The chief artist took out large scissors 20 centimeters long from the office and cut off the poster with the words “what are you, oh ... Gavrilov”.

8. Vysotsky's funeral

Taganka, opposite the theatre. The funeral of Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. I stood at the coffin in the theater for two hours, I could not leave. I made a mistake with the exposition, but when I went to the square, I saw it all. And only now, literally this year, I realized that in fact Vysotsky's funeral is the first unauthorized rally in the Soviet Union. The first nationwide disobedience to that government, when people came - no one convened them, no one drove them, as was done at the demonstrations on November 7 or May 1 - but they came.

9. Too loose

Special detention center in Moscow on Altufevsky highway. I filmed there several times and each time - with great interest. Well, what to say? With a lot of pain - it's too pompous. No, there wasn't much pain. But pity the kids. All those who have run away from home, found at railway stations, on the streets, are gathered there.

When they cut this boy's hair, lice jumped from him, about three meters from him. I barely had time to brush it off, I thought that I myself would get lice all over while I was filming it.

10. Zero waste production

70s, Moscow. Godless alley. Opposite that window, into which people hand over dishes that have just been washed from labels in a puddle, there is a Mineralnye Vody store - quite famous in Moscow. In order to hand over the dishes, get money, go opposite and buy wine or beer, which was also sold there, people were engaged in this business.

11. Life after Afghanistan

Late 80s. Moscow region. This is a rehabilitation hospital for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. There were boys like that. A whole hospital - 500 people who have just returned from there and saw death. They were difficult for the staff.

12. Best Photo of 1990 in America

November 6, 1990, the task of the magazine "Time" - to remove the design of the city before November 7. This is the last November 7 when a communist demonstration took place. The frame was printed in The Times, and then he entered the best photographs of the year in America - a healthy book, I have it. And the next day there was nothing. That's it, the last demonstration, the last parade. Paragraph.

13. A photo is not worth the grief caused for this photo.

I was filming something in Georgia - and suddenly an avalanche came down in Svaneti. One Svan man was at the bottom when an avalanche descended on his village, and together we drove along the mountain roads to the place of the tragedy. Our journey took three or four days. Arrived - the whole village collapsed. I started filming. There was no one on the streets, absolutely no one. And suddenly I saw these people rising to this remnant of the house - a man, a woman and a child, they carry small glasses with chacha or vodka in their hands. The man has a portrait of his relative who died under the avalanche on his chest. I understand that I can now make quite such a hard shot. They are coming. I know where to do it, I know how to do it. I am waiting. Here they come, I raise the device to my eyes, press it once. The silence is complete - the mountains. And the man looked at me. Behind me is my Svan, with whom I arrived, so he put his hand on my shoulder and says: “He doesn’t like that you are photographing.”

And I didn’t shoot anymore, I didn’t take a single shot. The woman was crying, sobbing, throwing herself on her knees and shoveling snow, and the child stood aside so strange, with some kind of hat pulled over one eye, and a man. I didn't shoot. And when it was all over, the man came up to me and invited me to a wake in the dugout. It is not customary to invite strangers to such events, but I was invited for the respect shown.

14.
No photo is worth the grief inflicted on people for the sake of this photo. You can then make excuses - now millions will see it, this, that, the fifth, the tenth. Despite the rigidity of our profession, the rigidity of the situations in which we sometimes find ourselves, it is necessary, first of all, to remain a person, and only then - a professional.

15. Kids in cages

The very first publication in the magazine "Ogonyok" from places not so remote - earlier in the Soviet Union such materials were not printed. This is a Judicial colony for juvenile delinquents. In four days I made a material that, in general, brought me quite a lot of fame and a lot of medals, was published in the Independent Magazine in English, and was published in many books. Then there was no digital camera, I could not see on the display whether my shadow fell correctly. This is exactly the shade I was looking for. It's in the punishment cell, the guy sits and looks at me, although I didn't even ask him to look.

16. Road of death

The beginning of the journey to the Pamirs, the beginning of the 80s. This is one of the most difficult business trips. We drove along the road Khorog - Osh, and this road was called the road of death. There are high mountains, 4.5 - 5 thousand meters, the road - serpentines, cliffs. And the gearbox flew by our car. If it weren't for the border guards... Everyone there helps each other, because they understand that if you stop on this road for the night, you might not wake up.

17. Non-flying weather

This is Domodedovo airport, 70s. I'm running from the train to the terminal building. The weather was bad, and for a long time the planes did not fly, and therefore all those who did not fly were dispersed around the airport and around. The man in the picture did not fly away, he is sleeping at the end of this railway "track".

18. For the first time

This is a future lieutenant, before the first solo flight. Here is his look. The first time the instructor will not be with him, he sits first in the park. This, in my opinion, is the Orenburg flight school or Omsk - in general, in those parts.

19. Building the future

This is Sakhalin, 1974. I went to work as a student photojournalist for a construction team. In this frame, my friends, classmates. And the person who is holding the legs of someone else is Yegor Veren, who is now one of the leaders of Interfax. These guys are laying an electric cable under the heating main, passing the end to one another.

20. Vendetta is OK

Corsica. I traveled around Corsica in the car of the head of the Corsican mafia. We drove high into the mountains. There was some kind of poet, artist, writer - very nice people, we talked with them, drank wine. I walked away from the company, I saw these two colorful guys. These are the inhabitants of a village high in the mountains. I speak French very badly. And they have some other language. Well, in general, I did not find anything better than to ask: “How are you doing with the vendetta?”. And one of them immediately reached behind his back and took out a pistol from under his shirt and said: “But we are always ready for a vendetta. Here's a vendetta - please. And then he smiled so sweetly.

Why don't I try blogging about photography here? And suddenly it works!

Since I am a photojournalist myself, the heroes of my stories will be people related to reportage photography: photojournalists, documentary photographers, photojournalists. It will be both the classics of the Soviet, Russian and foreign photography schools, as well as our contemporaries.

Almost a year ago, on May 17, the Sakhalin Regional Art Museum hosted the opening of a large photo exhibition "Grand Prix in Russian" - photographs of Soviet and Russian winners of the international competition "World Press Photo" from 1955 to 2013.(). One of the authors of the exhibition, WPP winners, wonderful photographers, Igor Gavrilov and Sergey Ilnitsky, came to the opening of the exposition.

From left to right: EPA - European Press Agency photographer Sergey Ilnitsky, exhibition curator, head of the RUSS PRESS PHOTO organization, photographer Vasily Prudnikov, photographer Alexander Zemlyanichenko, chief photographer of the Associated Press agency in Russia, and head Russian direction at the East News agency photographer Igor Gavrilov.

It is with Igor Gavrilov that I want to begin my story.

Igor Gavrilov was born in 1952 in Moscow. In 1970 he graduated from high school general education school. In the same year, he became the winner of the All-Union competition among school graduates "Entering Ball" and received the right to non-competitive admission to the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University. From 1975 to 1988 he was a photojournalist for Ogonyok magazine. In 1988, he received an offer for cooperation from Time magazine and became its Moscow correspondent, in the same year he was nominated for the title "Best Photographer of the Year" by Time magazine. Winner of the World Press Photo Award.

Igor Gavrilov is a living legend of Soviet photojournalism. His work is amazing, each photo is life, not covered up, but caught off guard. Many of the author's photographs were not published at the time just because they were too believable.

For Igor, the main genre is analytical reporting. The main goal in the work is to photograph the truth, in search of which he traveled all over Russia, worked in 50 foreign countries, photographed in almost all the hot spots of our country, on the seventh day after the explosion he flew over the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On creative meeting with island photography lovers. Sakhalin Regional Art Museum, May 19, 2013.

Photos by Igor Gavrilov with his comments.(Photos are not published in chronological order).

Early 90s. The shot was taken during, perhaps, my longest business trip. It was a series of reports about the Urals. And we drove by car from the Southern Urals to the very north, to Ivdel, where I rented a colony for life-sentenced prisoners. And along the way, we constantly came across such horror stories - that is, the whole country was lined with some absolutely phantasmagoric monuments of the Soviet era - these are hammers and sickles, tractors on pedestals, all kinds of Lenins of all sizes and varying degrees of peeling.

November 6, 1990, the task of the magazine "Time" - to remove the design of the city before November 7. This is the last November 7 when a communist demonstration took place. The frame was published in The Times, and then he entered the best photographs of the year in America. And the next day there was nothing. That's it, the last demonstration, the last parade. Paragraph.

Frame with the most unfortunate fate. I made it in Western Ukraine, in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. In those days, a fairly large number of foreigners from the socialist camp gathered there, many correspondents. I was walking to the press center from the hotel and saw this scene at the bus stop. Literally clicked twice. Some military man attacked me, began to shout to the whole of Ivano-Frankivsk that I was defaming the Soviet way of life, why I was filming disabled people, where did I come from.
In Ogonyok, the frame was not printed, and wherever I offered it, it was not accepted anywhere. The editor-in-chief of the Soviet Photo magazine personally uploaded this frame three times from collections that were sent to some international photo contests - Interpress Photo or World Press Photo, accompanying her actions with impartial comments.
The winds of perestroika blew out. A full editorial room of Moscow photojournalists gathered in Sovietsky Photo, the subject of discussion was how to modernize the magazine. I took out this picture with the words: "Just print such photos." And in response I heard: “Igor, where were you before, why didn’t you bring such shots to the Soviet Photo?”

This is the early 80s. The girls in the picture are models of the competition, they are drying their hair under this beautiful poster. The most interesting thing is that this picture was published in the Ogonyok magazine in those years, before perestroika, but somewhat cropped. The main artist took out large scissors 20 centimeters long from the office and cut off the poster with the words “what are you, oh ... Gavrilov”.

Earthquake in Armenia 1988. Lists of people who were found and were able to identify. They hang on the glass - the press center is improvised there in some building - and people come up all the time, read.

This shot - it's just walking down the street - a fraction of a second - they carried coffins at me. Waiting for aftershocks. Much has been written about this. This is an absolutely terrible sight.

Chief engineer of a garment factory. It was dug out of the rubble of the destroyed factory for 2.5 hours, all this time I stood under a rocking slab on a protruding beam. It is clear that in two and a half hours I could take a lot of photos, but some kind of force kept me in this unsafe place. Three, four frames - all that I managed to shoot from my position. Couldn't take anything off. Still, this is one of the best shots in this series. Who helped me? I tend to think of Him. Well, yes, or maybe it just happened. When I arrived in Moscow and showed the photographs, Ogonyok gave nominally one spread of fairly calm photographs. And I was in a lot of pain. I hoped that they would print more photos and stronger ones. And I sent it all to Time, and Time comes out with my frame on the front page, and then - a spread of photos, a huge spread, half a man's height - a column of text, large my name and photos and highly selected photos. Almost to the strip - how this factory director is dug up. When I saw the reportage, I got goosebumps because I didn't see it printed like that. But the most surprising thing was that about a week later I got a call from the Independent correspondent and said that they had just received a call from the press service of Margaret Thatcher and asked them to tell the author that they first saw Margaret Thatcher with wet eyes when she watched my report, and after that she ordered to provide very substantial material assistance to Armenia. Well, that is, I believe that I, in general, in this life, as a photographer, have fulfilled my function with this reportage. It's one thing to take photos, and another thing when these photos really help people. I can speak about it with pride.

July 28, 1980, Taganka, opposite the theatre. The funeral of Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. I stood at the coffin in the theater for two hours, I could not leave. I made a mistake with the exposition, but when I went to the square, I saw it all. And only now, just recently, I realized that in fact Vysotsky's funeral is the first unauthorized rally in the Soviet Union. The first nationwide disobedience to that government, when people came - no one convened them, no one drove them, as was done at the demonstrations on November 7 or May 1 - but they came.

70 years. Yakutia, the Lena River is one of my most interesting business trips, which I went on with my friend, a journalist, now a writer and screenwriter Serezha Markov. We were given the ship of the Academy of Sciences, and in a month we traveled on this scientific ship from Yakutsk to Tiksi. Stopping, of course. And they caught taimen, and went to the fishermen. This is just one of the fishing stations where we were thrown by helicopter, which was also quite easy to do in those years. That is, we got hooked on a helicopter in the morning, in the evening we were taken back to our ship. And this table is what was left after our dinner. The pelvis is from under the black caviar. And the child, since they have problems with toys there, then played with bottles of drunk vodka.

Late 80s - early 90s. Communal. It looks like a scenery at Mosfilm, where temporary partitions are being built, depicting some kind of life. But this is quite a real apartment. I was asked to remove the topic about communal apartments. I was not only in this apartment alone, but strained all my friends who know or have friends who live in communal apartments. But this one totally blew me away. In the frame - a large room of one family. There, in the corner, sits a mother, below us is her daughter, very sweet. They simply partitioned off this large room with a plywood partition to somehow separate from each other. But they fenced us not to the ceiling, but to the middle, and therefore it was possible to climb onto this partition, and from there make such a shot. I remember that the dust was not wiped there, I think, half a year or a year, I got down from there all in some kind of cobweb, dust, what the hell.

Symbol of the era. What we lived with for quite a long time, when a person came to the store and saw completely empty shelves there. This is the early 90s or 89th.

No photo is worth the grief inflicted on people for the sake of this photo. You can then make excuses - now millions will see it, this, that, the fifth, the tenth. Despite the rigidity of our profession, the rigidity of the situations in which we sometimes find ourselves, it is necessary, first of all, to remain a person, and only then - a professional.

The task of the magazine "Focus", a German magazine, one of the main ones in Germany. A report on the plight of children in Russia and Ukraine, that is, in this eastern space, in order to somehow break through these snickering burghers and show them that not everything in the world is as good as in their area. This is the Lviv region, more than 100 kilometers from Lviv - a small, old Orphanage in the village of Lavriv. When we arrived there with the correspondent Boris Reitschuster - such a young, talented guy, the correspondent was here, worked - the director of the orphanage was sitting, small in stature, such a dense, round-headed man who didn’t need any correspondents for hell.

The director is well aware that he is far from being in the best shape, so to speak, before the press, especially before the international press. His name was also Igor. But we drank vodka with him, somehow became friends, and he allowed us to shoot. And we spent five days from morning to night in this orphanage. I went up there. Well, here, in principle, you can see what condition this orphanage is in.

I adhered to such a slightly bluish-bluish gamut so that the cards were cold. Then Boris and I went to Ukraine two or even three more times to clear humanitarian aid - several trucks, that is, a whole road train with things (with TVs, jeans, food, etc.) and more than 200 thousand euros were credited to the orphanage account thanks to reportage.

Mid 80s. Kolkhoz market. We came there for a beer case, and at the same time I took such a picture.

“Now I shoot much less often. This is a topic for a separate and rather long conversation. I don’t like to shoot what is not interesting. I don’t know how to shoot for myself, I haven’t learned. stop, I guess. People stop and then start normally. I don’t know what will happen to me ahead. I want to shoot, but I don’t know what. I don’t know how to say what I would like to say in photographic language "I don't speak other languages. I rather think more than I realize. One of the main reasons, apparently, is that so much has been filmed, and I have been to so many countries, cities, situations that I have seen almost everything. Life, after all, it can be said that it is infinite and limitless, but on the other hand, all this is a few circles that repeat from century to century. And all our relationships, they are, in general, repeatable. And it is very, very difficult to repeat creatively , not always desirable.

Whoever gets paid for this, who puts up with it, who can shoot press conferences every day, does it. I can't. Someone can shoot the same war every day. I'm not interested. Someone can take pictures of architectural monuments every day. I'm not interested. I'm not interested in filming a theater, for example, because it's not my photo there, everything has already been done for me, and I'm only fixing what someone came up with.

Spying on people, firstly, has become more difficult, secondly, it has become easier, and thirdly, instead of 100 people, 100 million people in the country are already doing this. It's not that I'm afraid of competition, but I'm not interested in repeating what has already been done.

Without any coquetry, I perfectly understand that ... No, well, there is a certain amount of coquetry in this, of course, but I would still like to learn how to take pictures really. Indeed. Here I can do something, but I don’t know how much, I understand that I don’t know how much. Maybe I'll start learning to photograph, retire and...Suddenly I will learn,” says Igor Gavrilov.

The publication uses footage from the archives of I. Gavrilov and S. Krasnoukhov.

Site materials used

PP-Online presents the portfolio of the famous Soviet and Russian photojournalist Igor Gavrilov, who shot for Ogonyok, the American TIME, the German FOCUS, who devoted more than 40 years to his difficult profession.

From the biography of Igor Gavrilov. Born in 1952 in Moscow. In 1970, graduating from high school, he became the winner of the All-Union competition among school graduates and received the right to non-competitive admission to the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1975 -1988 works as a full-time photojournalist for Ogonyok magazine. In 1988, he moved to the American Time as a Moscow correspondent. Nominated for Best Photographer of the Year by Time magazine. From the late 1990s to 2010, he was a photojournalist for FOCUS magazine in Russia and the CIS. Winner of the World Press Photo Award. At the invitation of Brooks University (California, Santa Barbara) he gave master classes in photojournalism for university students. Today he is the head of the Russian photography department at the East News photo agency.

Text: Artyom Chernov. Photo: Igor Gavrilov.

Together with Igor, we selected from his huge archive 50 shots taken by him in various periods of his life - from his student years to very recent trips around the planet. Then Igor spoke about each frame - somewhere in a nutshell, somewhere in detail, and somewhere - with digressions into more general topics. It turned out to be a long and, we hope, interesting conversation, the dictaphone transcript of which we offer you in this material. Almost the entire text is Igor Gavrilov's direct speech, your correspondent's remarks begin with "PP". Please wait for this page to fully load before you start reading: there are many photos on it, and it is important that all of them appear in their places in the text.

RR: For starters - about the red hammer and sickle.

I.G.: This is the beginning of the 90s. The shot was taken during, perhaps, my longest business trip. It was a series of reports about the Urals. And we drove by car from the Southern Urals to the very north, to Ivdel, where I rented a colony for life-sentenced prisoners. And along the way, we constantly came across such horror stories - that is, the whole country was lined with some completely phantasmagoric monuments of the Soviet era - these are sickles and hammers, tractors on pedestals, all kinds of Lenins of all sizes and varying degrees of peeling. Previously, little attention was paid to these monuments, there were a lot of them, and they, most likely, did not carry any semantic load, but were erected according to some kind of idiotic habit. This one, in my opinion, is welded from metal and painted in an eerie red color. This monument is several human heights.

I.G.: This is Western Ukraine. And the year is most likely some 80s, before perestroika, of course. He is a very nice, wonderful person. Unfortunately, I don't remember his name. He is a goldsmith - there is a barrel of shit behind him, which he carries. During the war he served in the infantry. And there was a period of such a positional war, when the German trenches were opposite, on this side - our trenches, the soldiers were sitting - it was a hot summer, they didn’t bring water, they didn’t bring food either. But water is more important. And at night, the soldiers crawled in turn to a small, almost dry river, which actually separated the positions of the Germans and Soviet troops. And the time came for him to crawl - one bowler hat in his teeth, two bowler hats in his arms, an automatic machine. He crawls up to the river and sees that from the other side, in exactly the same outfit, only with a different machine gun, a Fritz crawls up, also in the teeth of a bowler hat and two bowler hats in his hands. He says we stopped here by the river, literally five meters between us, we look into each other's eyes, and I begin to fill the pot, lowering it into the water. German then - his own. Then I - two more of my own. And we crawl backwards from each other. He brought his water. He says he was scared, somehow uncomfortable - either he starts shooting, or I start shooting. And on that day, he swore to himself that if he returned home to the village alive, he would dig wells near the houses of those women who did not return from the war, so that they always had water in the house. And he did. I came to shoot him when he was digging the last well. And something more than 20 people did not return. That is, in his life he dug more than 20 wells for his fellow villagers. And the picture was taken when he was going somewhere to work, I was also going somewhere on this shit-cart with him, and we met the party organizer of the collective farm or something ... And so he made some claims to him. Absolutely wonderful person.

I.G.: Revolution Square, Moscow, most likely 70 years ... I don’t remember, maybe this shot was even taken when I was still a student - that is, from 71 to 75, I don’t remember exactly when I was still walking and just catching genre. And these are the same years when there was nothing to eat in the whole country, despite the fact that five-year plans were fulfilled and overfulfilled, and they threshed twice as much as they promised to thresh, they gave milk and meat, and they sewed shoes, but nowhere was not in stores. But people from the provinces came and for two or three days from dawn to dusk bought up everything that could be bought in the capital, and then left for their homes, giving gifts to relatives and friends.

Retreat one

I.G.: I have never worked in news agencies and newspapers, so I do not and never had, unfortunately, the habit of fixing the date and place. I have never been an information photographer, it was more important for me to create a certain image of that time or that event, or that person whom I shot. And even in my archive, many envelopes are not marked with dates. For some reason I thought that I would remember everything all my life. Now everything is simple: I looked at the date on the camera and found out. And I have some problems with it. Therefore, I, unfortunately, can only date pictures for decades ...

I.G.: 70 years. Yakutia, the Lena River is one of my most interesting business trips, which I went on with my friend, a journalist, now a writer and screenwriter Serezha Markov. We were given the ship of the Academy of Sciences, and in a month we traveled on this scientific ship from Yakutsk to Tiksi. Stopping, of course. And they caught taimen, and went to the fishermen. This is just one of the fishing stations where we were thrown by helicopter, which was also quite easy to do in those years. That is, we got hooked on a helicopter in the morning, in the evening we were taken back to our ship. And this table is what was left after our dinner. The pelvis is from under the black caviar. And the child, since they have problems with toys there, then played with bottles of drunk vodka.

Retreat second

I.G.: I have been working at Ogonyok since January 2, 1975. I have not yet defended my diploma, I was invited by Baltermants to work at Ogonyok. And on January 2 or January 3, Anatoly Vladimirovich Safronov, who was the editor-in-chief in those years, handed me the certificate of the Ogonyok magazine.

RR: Well, even then all the masters were alive there.

I.G.: Yes Yes. Well, actually, when I left, they were all alive. I left Ogonyok in 1991 or 1990. By the way, in my opinion, he was the first photographer who left Ogonyok, because people always left Ogonyok only feet first. From "Time" also, in my opinion, did not leave like that. I also left Time ... And then I left FOCUS ...

I.G.: 70s, Moscow. Godless alley. Opposite that window, into which people hand over dishes that have just been washed from labels in a puddle, there is a Mineralnye Vody store - quite famous in Moscow. In order to hand over the dishes, get money, go opposite and buy wine or beer, which was also sold there, people were engaged in this business.

I.G.: Frame with the most unfortunate fate. I made it again in Western Ukraine, in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, during some kind of youth festival. And, in general, a fairly large number of foreigners from the socialist camp, many correspondents gathered there. I was walking to the press center from the hotel and saw this scene at the bus stop. Literally clicked twice. Some military man immediately attacked me, began to shout to the whole of Ivano-Frankivsk that I was defaming the Soviet way of life, why I was filming disabled people, where did I come from. He grabbed me literally by the hand so tenaciously and went with me to the press center. There he again began to yell at someone, look for the boss. And while he was there rushing about about it, I just went on about my business. In Ogonyok, the frame was not printed, and wherever I offered it, it was not accepted anywhere. And it was only in the late 80s that the magazine "Smena" and the magazine "Journalist" suddenly took it from me.

The winds of perestroika blew out. Everyone wanted to get into these jets, adjust to the wind, including the Soviet Photo magazine, the editor-in-chief of which in those years was Olga Suslova, the daughter of that very Cardinal Gray Tsekovsky. She decided to hold a meeting of Moscow photographers so that we could express our wishes on how to modernize the Soviet Photo magazine. And before that, I just bought "Change", because I knew that this shot would come out. Quite a lot - such a full editorial hall - of Moscow photojournalists gathered in the "Soviet Photo". For some reason, the floor was given to me first, they said, here you are one of the youngest, come on, speak. And when Suslova asked what needs to be done to make the magazine better and to have good photographs, I took the Smena magazine out of the wardrobe trunk, opened it and showed it to her, and I said: “Just print such photos.” And in response I heard: “Igor, where were you before, why didn’t you bring such shots to the Soviet Photo?”. This was told to me by Suslova, who personally uploaded this frame three times from collections that were sent to some international photo contests - there Interpress Photo or World Press Photo. She then spoke rather impartially about this frame, approximately like the military man who grabbed my sleeve in Ivano-Frankivsk. And now I heard "Where have you been? .."

RR: Communal. It looks like a scenery at Mosfilm, where temporary partitions are being built, depicting some kind of life. But you, Igor, say that this is a real communal apartment. How can it be?

I.G.: This is a real communal apartment. I don't remember the name of this street, unfortunately. This is the “Kitay-gorod” metro, and this street goes to the Library of Foreign Literature.

RR: Solyanka street.

I.G.: Yes. And if you follow this street from the Moskva River, then this house is on the right, a little in the recess - a huge gray house. Then there were still communal apartments. I think it's the late 80's/early 90's. I was asked to remove the topic about communal apartments. I was not only in this apartment alone, but strained all my friends who know or have friends who live in communal apartments. But this one completely amazed me - there the ceilings were about six meters, probably. That is, in order to screw in or unscrew a light bulb in the corridor, it was necessary to put up a hefty ladder, they had it, wooden, heavy - just awful. And how these two old women and two or three even more or less young women dragged her there is completely incomprehensible. In the frame - a large room of one family. There, in the corner, sits a mother, below us is her daughter, very sweet. They simply partitioned off this large room with a plywood partition to somehow separate from each other. But they fenced us not to the ceiling, but to the middle, and therefore it was possible to climb onto this partition, and from there make such a shot. I remember that the dust was not wiped there, I think, half a year or a year, I got down from there all in some kind of cobweb, dust, what the hell.

I.G.: This is Sakhalin, 1974. I went to work as a student photojournalist for a construction team.

In this frame, my friends, classmates. And the person who is holding the legs of someone else is Yegor Veren, who is now one of the leaders of Interfax. These guys are laying an electric cable under the heating main, passing the end to one another.

I.G.: Mid 80s. This is the port of Yamburg, that is, not yet a port, but a place where supports for a portal crane are mounted. The very beginning of Yamburg. The "legs" of the crane are turned upside down here, they are somehow welded, and then put the other way around.

I.G.: Late 70s - early 80s again.

An example of how a rather boring, at first glance, task turns into an interesting, it seems to me, reportage:

I was sent from the Ogonyok magazine to some region in the village, to film a collective-farm meeting for reporting and re-election.

I arrived there - a dark hall, a small podium. People come out, say something, the collective farmers are sitting in the hall. Women are dressed in the same headscarves, and for all that, most of them are sitting in coats with fox collars. The men smoke in the dressing room when they announce a break, the smoke is a yoke - they smoke, they discuss something to themselves. Very interesting faces. For me, it was actually a kind of discovery. I thought that all these meetings are quite simple, that is, official words are read out, then everyone votes, and people disperse. In fact, quite strong passions were seething there - they criticized the chairman of the collective farm, they said that the windows were not inserted in the farm, that the cows were not milked, etc. - that is, it was very interesting and long, this meeting.

But for me, this material was also a professional lesson.

Being carried away by shooting these beautiful people, I completely forgot about the basic rule of a journalist, especially an information man. The fact that you still need to shoot the place where the event takes place.

I forgot to film the village. That is, the club was rented from me, the porch was rented, but where it is, what it is - it is not clear. And so, when I laid out the material on the tennis table in Ogonyok, where we looked through our materials, .. I was suddenly asked the question: where is the village? "But there is no village." They say, well then, take a ticket, go again, rent a village and come back so that tomorrow evening you will be there. Well, I got on the train again, took off, returned. And as a result, in the magazine, a frame with a village was printed in a format, in my opinion, 6 by 9 centimeters. Little at all.

RR: Well, this is generally a symbol of the era!

I.G.: Yes, what we lived with for quite a long time, when a person came to the store and saw completely empty shelves there. This is the early 90s or 89th. And so they lived throughout the country. But this is most likely done in the Urals.

I.G.: Baikal, one of the islands on this lake. I shot this with my friend Jenz Hartman for the Bild or Die Welt newspaper. The kids, the children of the fishermen, were actually wild, shy, and in order to get in touch with them, I gave them beautiful boxes from under the Kodak film. And for some time the shooting was interrupted. Until I took it all away from them, promising that I would return it later.

Nothing should be given to children until the shooting is finished, especially in poor countries. If you gave someone some candy or money, you better get in a taxi and drive three kilometers away from this place until the children get tired of running after your taxi, otherwise they will strip you from head to toe - you won’t take anything else off.

I.G.: These are the consequences of the unreasonable leadership of the country. This is Naberezhnye Chelny - All-Union Komsomol shock construction. As you know, it was all there in an open field, almost built quickly. That is, Komsomol members, young people from different parts of the Soviet Union were driven to the construction site in order to build an auto giant using shock methods. They did this, but in the evenings and nights they did something else, apparently, that is, they met, drank port wine there, played the guitar, sang songs, and then did ding-ding. With a ding-ding, as you know, children are obtained. These children were not always born in families, often just out of love. But they were made out of love, and when they were born, great love might no longer exist. Therefore, there were many unsettled children in incomplete families, only with their mothers. When these kids grew up, they felt the strength, they began to form youth gangs, into courtyards - they fought yard against yard, block against block, district against district, then city against city. And this has become a very, very strong problem for the police and other bodies - fights, robberies, theft, violence. The Volga region was simply captured by such a gangster youth locust.

It's the mid 80's I think. The Soviet government did not like to talk about it. And so we went with a correspondent to Naberezhnye Chelny, and we got to know these guys. They, in general, did not immediately allow themselves to be filmed and behaved rather defiantly. It was not easy with them: the people are rather unpleasant.

I.G.: Special detention center in Moscow on Altufevsky highway. I filmed there several times and each time - with great interest. Well, what to say? With a lot of pain - it's too pompous. No, there wasn't much pain. But I feel sorry for the children, I feel sorry for the children. All those who have run away from home, found at railway stations, somewhere else, on the streets, are gathered there. Someone ran away today or yesterday, they are still more or less clean, their parents come for them, they give them back. And someone came from other regions, has been wandering for a long time. When they cut this boy’s hair, lice jumped from him, I don’t know, about three meters from him. I barely had time to brush it off, I thought that I myself would get lice all over while I was filming it. The second frame was taken in the same place, during the sanitation.

I.G.: This is my oldest daughter. Played. Played, played and fell asleep right in the toys.

I.G.: The beginning of the journey to the Pamirs, the beginning of the 80s. This is one of the most difficult business trips. We drove along the road Khorog - Osh, and this road was called the road of death. There are high mountains, 4.5 - 5 thousand meters. During this business trip, I managed to visit the highest mountain village in our country, in the village of Murghab. Five or something thousand meters, in my opinion. The road - serpentines, cliffs. And the gearbox flew by our car. If it weren't for the border guards... Everyone there helps each other, because they understand that if you stop on this road for the night, you might not wake up. Because the wind is wild, the temperature is -25 - 30 degrees, while the wind there seems to be - 60 - 70. It's terrible. But it was interesting.

I.G.: Estonia. One of my favorite shots, it's kind of gentle. In any case, the old man carrying wild flowers, I don’t know to whom - maybe he’ll just put it in a vase, maybe he’ll give it to his old wife - it’s touching. I went to the university in Tartu to make a topic, and on Saturday or Sunday I just went to drive along the roads - deserted roads, some farms.

I overtook this old man, stopped, got out of the car and took a picture. You always have to stop.

No need to be lazy to stop the car for the sake of the frame.

I.G.: This is Domodedovo airport, 70s. This is me running from the train to the terminal building. The weather was bad, and for a long time the planes did not fly, and therefore all those who did not fly were dispersed around the airport and around. The man simply did not fly away, he is sleeping at the end of this railway "path".

I.G.: This is Victory Day, the year is approximately 76-77. Such a scene was formed on the embankment. I think that the wisest one is the one who stands alone in the middle, he does business, drinks beer, eats a sandwich. And they still don't know what they'll do.

I.G.: This is a future lieutenant, before the first solo flight. Here is his look. The first time the instructor will not be with him, he sits first in the park. This, in my opinion, is the Orenburg flight school or Omsk - in general, in those parts.

I.G.: Late 80s. Moscow region. This is a hospital for soldiers, for soldiers who returned from Afghanistan, a rehabilitation hospital. And there were boys like that. A whole hospital - 500 people who have just returned from there and saw death. They were difficult for the staff.

I.G.: This is the early 80s. This is the first International hairdressing competition in Moscow, it was held, in my opinion, in the Dynamo sports complex. And these are the contestants, that is, the contestants - in the sense of the contest model, they have their hair dried under this beautiful poster. The most interesting thing is that this picture was published in the Ogonyok magazine in those years, before perestroika, but somewhat cropped. The chief artist took out large scissors 20 centimeters long from the office and cut off the poster with the words “what are you, oh ... Gavrilov”.

I.G.: 75th, 76th, maybe years. Kalininsky Prospekt, as it was then called, the store, in my opinion, "Spring". It was forbidden to shoot there, so I had to get permission, of course. Well, for the Ogonyok magazine, this is not a problem at all - they wrote a letter - they allowed me to shoot. I just made a report about the store and at the same time took such a shot here.

I.G.: Of course not. Only after perestroika was, of course, published many times and shown at exhibitions. And now, in my opinion, in Houston, perhaps, there was a biennale, here it is also published in the catalog there. This bald man was sold in every store. All officials were required to have it on their desks.

I.G.: The funeral of Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. This is Taganka, opposite the theatre. It was a very difficult day for me, because I loved and love this person very, very much and will always love and respect him, he means a lot to me in life. I think that somehow he made me through his songs and his words, his thoughts. For some reason, I stood at the coffin in the theater for two hours, probably. Well, I couldn't leave. And the exposure was wrong. And then I went to the square, I saw it all. And only now, literally this year, I realized that in fact the funeral of Vysotsky - and this is the Olympics, the special regime in Moscow - is the first unauthorized rally in the Soviet Union.

RR: Well, not a rally...

I.G.: Well, this is the first nationwide disobedience to that government, when people came - no one convened them, no one drove them, as was done at the demonstrations on November 7 or May 1, when everyone went according to the order. Someone went, yes, and according to the will of the heart, to drink vodka in front of Red Square or later there - it was different. But basically, it's all a rip-off. And here all of Moscow came to the Taganka Theater.

I.G.: Late 80s, Yerevan. This is a rally near, in my opinion, the prosecutor's office demanding secession from the Soviet Union, secession from the USSR. It was quite bloodless there, thank God, it did not work out like in Tbilisi or like in Lithuania. This is interesting from a purely professional point of view: I took such a picture, and my friend and colleague Ruben Mangasaryan was filming with me, he was also behind the chain of soldiers at that moment. But for some reason he shot a frame along the arms - he has the same coincidence - arms, arms, but this person is not there. Either journalistic ethics interfered with him, and he did not shoot from behind my back.

In principle, we, the professionals, had this: we did not allow ourselves to take a picture from behind the back of our colleague.

Now, in my opinion, they didn’t give a damn about this for a long time, and everyone takes the same shot, sometimes they also hit each other with their elbows.

RR: Moreover, the bosses in the agencies ask why you didn’t shoot like theirs, your competitors, like that?

I.G.: Well, these are rather stupid bosses, firstly, because if they hire a photographer, then they must trust him and believe in him - if he took such a picture, then he took such a picture. Baltermants never asked me such a question. And none of my editors, thank God, in decent magazines all my life - no one asked me why I shot like that, and not like someone else. It's always been the other way around. In the same situation, people behave in completely different ways. This is interesting.

I.G.: This is the 90th year, the task of Time magazine is to remove the decoration of the city before November 7th. This is the last November 7 when a communist demonstration took place. Here it is November 6, 1990 filmed. And the frame was printed in The Times, and then it entered the best photographs of the year in America - a healthy book, I have it. And the next day there was nothing. That's it, the last demonstration, the last parade. Paragraph.

I.G.: Mid 80s. Kolkhoz market. We came there for a beer case, and at the same time I took such a picture.

I.G.: 2011. The restaurant in the hotel "Ukraine" is very full of himself. During the banquet, the waitress who served our table.

I.G.: 2003 - 2004. Polygon. A landfill where garbage is collected from all over the city. This is the largest landfill. And people work there, live there, everyone has their own specialization - who collects banks, who collects paper. If you do not collect what you are supposed to collect, you can be buried at this landfill, no one will ever find you there. Your life, your subordination, your relationships. I filmed with the permission of the owners of this training ground for the Focus magazine, so I had an escort who protected me.

I.G.: My friend, journalist, Pole Zygmund Dzinchalovsky and I flew to Kamchatka, then to the Aleutian and Commander Islands in order to film a report on the slaughter of seals. Late 90s. But we were told that the ship did not go to Bering Island due to the lack of fuel there, etc. The plant on the mainland for processing these skins was closed, because no one needed these fur coats anymore, because everyone from China was already bringing normal ones. But we had to make this topic - it was the main article of the Focus magazine, and therefore we flew with great difficulty by helicopter from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, flew over the whole of Kamchatka and even captured part of Chukotka, seated scientists there - ornithologists, cat watchers, for walruses. We just joined this expedition and flew. As a result, in order to get to the Aleutian Islands, we paid 8 thousand dollars for kerosene. The trip lasted a total of 40 days. And I actually filmed a report for the magazine for four hours. I shot a lot of interesting things, and besides that, of course, there. And it's good that I worked for the Focus magazine, and that I had as many films as I wanted. But when everything was filmed, I had literally a few cassettes left. If I flew from some Soviet publication - they gave, well, I don’t know, to us in Ogonyok at one time, if they give 10 Kodaks, then this was considered completely unrealizable happiness.

Retreat third

I.G.: ...When I became a professional photographer, I just didn't have time to walk down the street, because I traveled a lot. I could do two or three business trips a month, for the magazine. It's not like newspapers - went for one day, returned, or went, filmed five topics in two days and returned. Our business trips were long, they allowed us somehow to look more closely at the events or at the places where we have been. This is a huge plus - work in the magazine, especially in those years in Ogonyok, when the travel fund was completely inexhaustible - I could go anywhere in the Soviet Union absolutely calmly. That is, in two days I made out a business trip to the North Pole, to Chukotka, to Kamchatka - this was no problem, Baltermants was always very loyal to this.

RR: Did the initiative come from you or from someone else?

I.G.: As a rule, I think that in percentage terms it was somewhere around 60 to 40. Still, most of them are topics proposed by the editors, that is, by journalists who worked in the editorial office, or by the editorial board, and 40 - 30 percent - these are topics that we, the photographers themselves, suggested. Every month, Baltermants collected a leaflet from us with topics that we had to come up with, what we would like to shoot.

RR: How did you come up with them?

I.G.: From the head.

RR: Sitting in Moscow.

I.G.: From the head.

RR: Without the Internet, how can you come up with a topic about Chukotka while sitting in Moscow, how did you do it?

I.G.: Well, firstly, the Internet was and worked quite well, it was more critical, more objective and quite informative. The Internet was the House of Journalists, a pub in the House of Journalists, where all the photographers of Moscow gathered almost every evening, drank beer and exchanged impressions about business trips, about their plans.

And always the guys could advise, and I advised someone something. Well, then there were newspapers, there was television. Well, it was a fantasy. If I wanted to remove mail delivery in areas Far North, then please, the editors took me to the minister, the minister listened to me and advised me, gave recommendations, and I went and filmed - it was like that. To make this topic, mail delivery, Safronov, the editor-in-chief, called the Minister of Communications - this was Mangeldin Danyar Iskanderovich, who gladly received me, gave me tea, cognac, and we discussed for an hour and a half what and how I would shoot. So. Well, the topics were different.

RR: And there wasn’t such a thing among colleagues that you stole or intercepted my topic, how about competition?

I.G.: No no. For 15 years of work at Ogonyok, perhaps only once or twice this happened when I suggested a topic, for example, KSP, and another photographer also wanted to go, went, then one topic was glued from his shooting and from mine . As a rule, no. Well, firstly, it was as if we had our own journalistic, photojournalistic ethics, then the ethics were intra-Ogonkovskaya. Then Baltermants very wisely sorted it all out, he was very clever man in this regard, a great leader. I mean, that didn't happen to us. And the photographers were already divided, as it were, according to the subject, and if they knew that Bochinin was shooting sports, then no one climbed into sports, if they knew that Sasha Nagralyan, an Armenian, he knows the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia and goes there constantly to shoot, then in Nobody went to Armenia for such usual shootings. That is, everything was somehow regulated enough.

I.G.: 93-94, St. Petersburg, Academy of Arts, final preparations for the display of term papers.

I.G.: Mid 2000s. I don't remember where. Russian province. This is the office of some middle class official, and the leader hangs there. And all these icons, all the saints, are on chairs, and at the top, the most holy one, that means.

I.G.: Viktor Pelevin at home in Moscow.

RR: How did he let you take pictures of himself, why?

I.G.: I shot it for Focus magazine. But it didn't make it into the magazine. They needed a document, they needed a face. And all my artistic delights were not interested in the magazine.

But if you have the opportunity, you still need to shoot what you think, what you imagine - let it be somewhat out of line with your assignment.

I.G.: Siberia, Tyumen region. I shot this for the German Greenpeace about oil pollution environment in oil producing areas. And we drove to the field where the Greenpeace scouts found spills - it's winter - and we drove quite fast. And through the branches that flicker, I noticed this duck. The driver stopped and began to sneak towards her through the snow through the bushes. She did not fly away - well, she is warming herself. The torch melts the ice, heats up the puddle, and the duck warms up. Then, when I had already approached literally two meters, she flew away. I have footage of her taking off.

RR: One of your most famous reports.

I.G.: The very first publication in the magazine "Ogonyok" from places not so remote - earlier in the Soviet Union such materials were not printed. This is the Judicial Colony for Juvenile Offenders, I stayed there, I think, for three or four days. It was interesting in those years - what people have never seen always attracts interest. It is also interesting for a photographer to be where before you, if you were, then you didn’t shoot. Then all this could be removed. And in four days I made a material that, in general, brought me quite a lot of fame and a lot of medals, was published in the Independent Magazine in English, and was published in many books. Then there was no digital camera, I could not see on the display whether my shadow fell correctly. This is exactly the shade I was looking for. It is in the punishment cell he sits and looks at me. I didn't even ask him to watch.

I collected this series for a very long time - a lot was filmed. And the process of forming this series and the series of drug addicts was longer for me at one time, but this process brought the most success, including on World Press Photo.

I.G.: It's in the same place, one of the chiefs. The guy does not speak for several days, they just brought him, in my opinion, he has not answered a single question for several days.

I.G.: This is a smoking room. They do it at school - they have a school there, and during the break they went out to smoke.

I.G.: This is one of some political classes. This shot won a big prize from Kodak. That is, this frame is very, so to speak, my favorite frame.

I.G.: This is a date of these youngsters with their parents. When I arrived at the colony, I asked the head of the colony to take me to the special unit and show the cases of the convicts so that I could understand who I was filming. I read quite a lot of cases, but one thing struck me completely, the case when a boy of 14 years old took the elevator to the top floor and, going downstairs, rang the doorbell - well, a fairly harmless child's game. But when a four-year-old girl opened the door to him on one of the floors, he went into the apartment and saw that there was no one there, he raped her, killed her, then drowned her, then turned on the gas in the kitchen and left. My daughter was also four years old then, as I imagined it all ... and I said to the head of the colony: “Listen, you tell me this ... just don’t show it, because I’ll kill him right away, I’ll just hit my head against the wall, and he’ll won't. But show me on the last day - I want to see what kind of creature this is. Well, here is this guy.

RR: Spectacled.

I.G.: Yes. It's to kill the snot ... And what a mother, she looks at him there - you are my dear, you are my unfortunate, but how are you here. And the fact that he killed the child is...

RR: And how much did they give him?

I.G.: Yes, they gave him five years in total. Those are minors.

RR: I wanted to ask, how did you manage to agree on this shooting?

I.G.: Of course, I myself know how to negotiate, I will negotiate with the devil bald, but in this particular case, the editors of Ogonyok negotiated with the prison commanders. This is the end of the 80s. The chiefs of the colony were quite loyal to the Ogonyok magazine. I happy man in this regard, I have always worked in very prestigious, respected publications, their authority helped to negotiate with anyone and, practically, about anything. Well, without false modesty, I repeat, I myself play the role of a negotiator very well.

I.G.: I was filming something in Georgia - and suddenly an avalanche came down in Svaneti. One man turned out to be a Svan down there, and he took me upstairs in a car to Svaneti. He was just from this village, which was hit by an avalanche. And so we went there along the mountain roads. And we got busted several times. Not us, but for example, we are driving - and suddenly an avalanche comes down ahead of us and blocks the road, it is impossible to pass. We start to go back, and another avalanche descends. And we find ourselves on a section of the road on an empty one - an avalanche in front, and an avalanche in the back, and there is nowhere to go. We are waiting for some kind of excavator, bulldozer to arrive. And so we drove for three or four days, spending the night in some huts along the road, in some small villages, eating bread, drinking water and vodka. And we came to this village, and this is the birthplace of the famous mountaineer Mikhail Khergiani, the “Snow Leopard”, there is a monument to him, there is a small museum. And I saw that the village was completely destroyed, not a single whole house was left, and only generic watchtowers stood, which were built even without a fastening mortar. And they survived. The whole village was destroyed. Well, I started filming something. There was no one on the streets, absolutely no one. And suddenly I saw that these people were rising to this remnant of the house - a man, a woman and a child, they were carrying small glasses with chacha or vodka, I don’t know what. The peasant has a portrait of his relative who died under an avalanche on his chest. I understand that I can now make quite such a hard shot. They are coming. I know where to do it, I know how to do it. I am waiting. Here they come, I raise the device to my eyes, press it once. The silence is complete - the mountains. And the man looked at me. Behind me is my Svan, with whom I arrived, so he put his hand on my shoulder and says: “He doesn’t like that you are photographing.” And I didn’t shoot anymore, I didn’t take a single shot. The woman was crying, sobbing, throwing herself on her knees and shoveling snow, and the child stood aside so strange, with some kind of hat pulled over one eye, and a man. I didn't shoot. And when it was all over, the man came up to me and said something to me in Georgian. My svan translated to me: “He invites you to a wake in the dugout. And in general, it is not customary for us to invite strangers to such events. But now you respected him, and he understood that you good man and he invites you. And if necessary, he said that you can even take pictures.” And then there were more people. Appeared very interesting person with huge eyes, who dug up his wife. He was somehow able to walk several tens of meters through the avalanche, literally pushing it apart with his hands. I gave this shooting to various magazines. And I have preserved this frame, and many more frames have been preserved. But here's the one - for some reason I remember the eyes of that person - I can't find that frame. The man had amazing eyes. They began to tell me that I was very brave. The day before me, a large group of journalists flew in from Tbilisi by helicopter, they landed, took pictures quickly, talked a little and flew away. And you went all this way, but you don’t even know how dangerous it was, and you could die at any minute, just like we could die here. For this we respect you. It kind of hit me. Because I didn't really see it as a big risk. Well, there is an avalanche in front, an avalanche in the back, but the avalanche is not on me. I just didn't know what it was, I guess. But the svan later explained to me that in fact he was afraid. Here is the story behind this photo. That is, I could shoot a lot of things, but I took one single shot in this situation.

Retreat fourth

I.G.: Sometimes, you probably don’t need to shoot something, or you need to keep these photos with you. Well, that is, with the eyes you photographed them - and they will live like a memory. And these will be only your photos that you cannot show to anyone.

You have to respect people. You can't walk on corpses, you can't shift them. In some kind of rage, sometimes, in some kind of ecstasy, sometimes we do things that are completely obscene from the point of view of morality. But we are professionals, we are forgiven a lot. But in my life I try not to do this and, in my opinion, I don’t. As a rule, I do not climb with a camera in the face of a person who is dying of grief. If I feel that he saw me and reacts normally, I will shoot. If I see that he does not want to, I most likely will not do it. Because like no good shot is worth my life or the life of my colleague...

... And in the same way it can be said that not a single photograph is worth the grief inflicted, inflicted on people for the sake of this photograph - this should not be done either. You can then make excuses - now millions will see it, this, that, the fifth, the tenth. But this is already Dostoevsky beginning: a society cannot be happy if, so to speak, it is based on the tears of a child. Such a relationship. And, despite the rigidity of our profession, the rigidity of the situations in which we sometimes find ourselves, we must, first of all, remain a person, and then a professional.

I.G.: This is an earthquake in Armenia. These are lists of people who were found and were able to identify. It's on glass - a press center is improvised there in some building - and people come up all the time, read.

I was in Baku, where I filmed the entry of our troops - the post-Sumgayit events. National unrest began there, and troops were sent there, and I filmed there. In general, it’s quite usual - the troops are on the streets, and people walk along the walls, they don’t feel much love, of course, for this. There was a colonel there - the head of the press service, such a normal man. So I go up to him - and I arrived there when I was still working at Ogonyok, but I was already actively publishing in The Times - and I go up to him, I say: "I need a tank." He says: “What the hell is a tank for you, Gavrilov?”. I say: “You see, I want to shoot Baku through the embrasure of the tank - as it sees soviet soldier this one is beautiful ancient city through the slot of the tank. He says: “You are probably oh ... l, Gavrilov.” I say, “No, not really. Well, that's how you want it." He says, well, I can’t give you a tank, but the idea is interesting. He somehow caught fire, says: "Let's go to the commander." We come to the commander, I say: "That's it, that's the idea." Well, he also characterizes my impudence, so to speak, only at the level of a general, and says: “I won’t give a tank, I will give an infantry fighting vehicle, there is also a slot there - take it off, ride.” And I rode around Baku for a day, filming people, soldiers, Azerbaijanis, the city through this slot. And in the evening I am sitting in a hotel - and suddenly they report that an earthquake has happened in Armenia. Half an hour later, my wife calls me and says: “Igor, where are you, in Baku or already in Armenia?” For some reason she thought that I had already rushed. In the morning I go up to the colonel and say: "Listen, I need a plane." He says: “What are you, oh ... l, Gavrilov? Do you want to shoot Baku from an airplane now? I say: “There is an earthquake in Armenia, we need to fly there urgently.” He says: “Well, how is it, the plane, where can I get it for you?”. I say: "It's important: who is the first to provide assistance Armenian people? Soviet army". He says: "Well, let's go to the commander," - we are again to the commander. He says: “Here again is Gavrilov from Ogonyok. I say: “Thank you for the BMP - everything is fine, I took everything off. But I would like a plane today. He says, "Are you out of your mind?" I say: "Well, you need to help." He says: "A good idea. I will send two generals with you and a company of soldiers - let them help there. And 40 minutes later I was already on the plane. When my colleagues were just driving to the airport to fly to Yerevan and then go to Leninakan, I was already boarding the plane, and literally an hour later I was already in Leninakan. That is, I was the very first photographer in the world who ended up there. And on the first day I couldn't shoot, I started to rake some stones. Then the Armenians saw that I had a camera, they said, why are you poking around here, you flew in to take pictures - well, take pictures then, why ... Well, I started shooting. Well, what happened, what happened.

I.G.: And the next frame - it's just walking down the street - a fraction of a second - they carried coffins at me. Waiting for aftershocks. Much has been written about this. This is an absolutely terrible sight. It's corpses everywhere.

I.G.: It's never clear what's driving you. Sometimes some force stops you or, on the contrary, tells you to go faster or go in some direction. This is not always a consequence of the work of the brain, this is what this frame testifies to. I recently attended a master class with Georgy Kolosov. For some reason, he talks a lot about the fact that he does not remember how he filmed, what he filmed, and in general where it all comes from. I don’t know, it didn’t happen to me so often, and I didn’t think about it so often. But this frame is evidence of a completely incomprehensible set of circumstances. That is, it is clear that in the ruined city, in which all day long the struggle for life does not stop for a minute, the tears do not stop for a second in the hope that someone will be found, or they mourn the one they found, or they are looking for each other, that is, there is a constant process going on there, which is very photogenic, like it doesn’t sound cynical, suddenly I saw that a large number of people were digging something. By this time, some rescuers had already arrived. In general, a large number of people dig something. I asked what was going on.

They say: “We are digging out the chief engineer of the garment factory, such and such, such and such, a very good person, we love him.” And I decided to wait until they dig it up. And above the place where they did all this, there was such a big, big beam hanging - well, a structure left over from the destroyed factory, and I climbed onto it. She staggered so much, but the canvas stood quite tall - there were such thick armatures. And above me, a large concrete slab still swayed. And I stood under this slab, which swayed like a visor, I swayed on this beam, and below people got out this man who was showing signs of life. And it went on for two or two and a half hours. That is, it is clear that in two and a half hours I could take a lot of photos. But what power held me. It cannot be said that I was resting, because it was hard to prance on this beam. And then, to be honest, I periodically thought about the stove, which could just about crush me. After two and a half hours they got this man. It could happen that the backs - I couldn’t manage the process, I couldn’t push anyone away with my elbow, I couldn’t squeeze anywhere, I literally took three or four shots.

They dug it up and lifted it up. And here is the composition. There are a few more horizontal shots - a little more space with people. That is, I managed to remove something. And he couldn't take anything. Still, this is one of the best shots in this series. Who helped me? Well, in general, I tend to think of Him. Well, yes, but maybe it just happened that way. That is, it is still not clear what directs mine.

When I arrived in Moscow, I showed the photographs, "Spark" gave - it was already a perestroika "Spark", but he printed purely nominally one spread of fairly calm photographs. And I was in a lot of pain.

Already in those years, I was not very upset if the publication did not satisfy me, because I was more interested in what I actually shot. I knew that if it was there, it meant that I had done my job honestly, professionally, well, and this, in the end, would not be lost. And the magazine, in general, has the right to print what it needs. This is not my journal, after all. Most of my photographs are the best, they have never been printed in Soviet time. I'm used to it.

But here I hoped that they would print more photographs and stronger ones. And I sent it all to Time, and Time came out with the main reportage of the issue. And they nominated me for this report for the best reporter of the year. And then I asked The Times if it was possible - they said yes, you can, and I took a bunch of photographs to my friend, a correspondent for The Independent. He says: "Igor, - well, it's been a week and a half or two weeks." I say: “You went to London, and they will figure it out there - they will - they will, no - well, they won’t, well, what can you do.” He sent. And the newspaper "The Independent" came out - in those years a very respected, influential newspaper, with an excellent, by the way, supplement "The Independent Magazine" on Sunday, very photographic, and she herself gave very strong photographs. She comes out with my frame on the front page, and then - a spread of photographs, a huge spread, half a man's height - a column of text, large my name and photographs and highly selected photographs. Almost to the strip - how this factory director is dug up. When I saw the reportage, I got goosebumps because I didn't see it printed like that. But the most surprising thing was that about a week later I got a call from the Independent correspondent and said that they had just received a call from the press service of Margaret Thatcher and asked them to tell the author that they first saw Margaret Thatcher with wet eyes when she watched my report, and after that she ordered to provide very substantial material assistance to Armenia. Well, that is, I believe that I, in general, in this life, as a photographer, have fulfilled my function with this reportage. It's one thing to take photos, and another thing when these photos really help people. I can speak about it with pride.

I.G.: The task of the magazine "Focus", a German magazine, one of the main ones in Germany. A report on the plight of children in Russia and Ukraine, that is, in this eastern space, in order to somehow break through these snickering burghers and show them that not everything in the world is as good as in their area. This is the Lviv region, more than 100 kilometers from Lviv - a small, old orphanage in the village of Lavriv. When we arrived there with the correspondent Boris Reitshuster - such a young, talented guy, the correspondent was here, worked - the director of the orphanage was sitting, small in stature, such a dense, round-headed man who didn’t need any correspondents for hell.

He is well aware that he is far from in the best shape, so to speak, appears before the press, especially before the international press. His name was also Igor. But we drank vodka and somehow became friends, and he allowed us to shoot. And we spent five days from morning to night in this orphanage. I went up there. Well, here, in principle, you can see what condition this orphanage is in. The chill is fierce there, in the dining room.

I.G.: Afghanistan. Boris Reitschuster and I flew there for the American bombing, they were about to begin. This is the border with Tajikistan. Early 2000s.

The fact is that the war is not filmed during the war, the war is filmed around, and you can make a good shot that says a lot. In general, these eyes speak volumes. Not in a trench at all. In any case, it's better than the way it sometimes shoots" fighting"Our television and not only ours.

For quite definite money - 100 dollars - a shot from a cannon, 200 dollars - a shot from a tank - and the shelling was allegedly removed.

Well, guys, supposedly I did not film the shooting. And everything was calmly filmed - I saw, then these shots were transmitted over the box, that, they say, there was shelling. Why the hell is this necessary?

I.G.: 10 July. 2006, Mongolia. The country is unusually beautiful, photogenic. This is a press conference. I flew there to the opening of the monument to Genghis Khan in Ulaanbaatar. It's theirs main character, probably the most scary man in the history of mankind, if he can be called a man at all, who killed millions. Probably surpassed our Stalin. Or maybe not. In terms of cruelty, I think they can be compared. But for the Mongols, he is a hero, because at one time a small people muzzled half the world, and they are proud of it, transferring that power to themselves. This strange property of people, why it is so, is completely incomprehensible. What to be proud of, the fact that seas of blood flowed, and you are supposedly the great-great-great-great-grandfather of that same killer? We are the same, in fact, many of us are the same.

This is a press conference of the President of Mongolia at his residence.

RR: That is, one of these comrades is the president?

I.G.: Second from the right is the President of Mongolia.

RR: What is the name, do not remember, of course.

I.G.: No. And it's very easy to find out.

They brought wooden tables, covered them with this golden tablecloth, picked up a speakerphone. As such, there is no residence. What is a residence? This is a huge expanse of endless Mongolian land, fenced and called the residence of the president. Somewhere, maybe there is a house. But this is pure field and hills.

I.G.: Corsica. I traveled around Corsica in the car of the head of the Corsican mafia.

RR: Do you also have a brother in your wife?

I.G.: Well, let's shut up. In restaurants, everyone came up and asked: “Did you like it? “Will you let me have the car keys?” And then gifts were put in the trunk. We went to the mountains, high, high to the mountains. There was some kind of poet, artist, writer - very nice people, we talked with them, drank wine. I walked away from the company, I saw these two colorful guys. These are the inhabitants of a village high in the mountains. I speak French very badly. And they have some other language. Well, in general, I did not find anything better than to ask: “How are you doing with the vendetta?”. And he immediately, therefore, reached behind his back and took out a pistol from under his shirt and said: “But we are always ready for a vendetta. Here's a vendetta - please. And then he smiled so sweetly.

I.G.: New Year 2010 in Tibet. Business trip for the Russian Newsweek magazine. We traveled a lot in Tibet by car. Huge spaces. And all these are fairy tales that there is no land in China, that there is overpopulation. There are vast uninhabited spaces there, there can still be three Chinas.

I once left the temple. And this is a boy who lives in this monastery. For some reason he was dancing or doing some exercises there. But they were not like these breathing exercises or some kind of hand-to-hand combat exercises. And when I pointed the camera at him, he immediately ran away, but did not run away from the square. I went back to the temple and watched from behind the curtain. He came again, again began to do some other steps. I went out with my hands free - the cameras are hanging - he is not afraid. Well, in general, it took me 15 minutes to make this shot. Because as soon as he touched the cameras with any hand, he immediately ran away and hid behind a column, and then returned again - was it such a game he had.

Retreat fifth

RR: Why are you a photographer at all?

I.G.: Purely by chance. Most likely, I was born an artist at heart. And my first publication in general was in the Soviet Screen magazine - the fourth cover, my sculptural works were printed there. I was engaged in this in the circle of the House of Cinema, even on Vorovskogo Street when the House of Cinema was located.

And then in the summer, while relaxing with my grandmother, I met one uncle, the uncle was fond of photography, it also seemed interesting to me. And when I arrived in Moscow, I moved from the iso-circle to the photo-circle.

RR: How old are you?

I.G.: I was 13 years old. There was a wonderful teacher - Karpov Boris Mikhailovich. So I was engaged in the photo circle of the House of Cinema. Then I entered the circle of the Palace of Pioneers to Golberg Israel Isaakovich, studied there. At the age of 14, I published my first photo in the magazine "Young Naturalist", unusually ingenious: I shot a power line through a twig with hoarfrost. It was 66 years old. This is where it all started. Well, then I became the winner of the "Zorkiy - Friendship 50" competition among children from all over the world, and they sent me to Artek, and there I also received two gold medals in some Artek competitions. And then I came to Moscow and entered the School of Young Journalists.

RR: At journalism.

I.G.: Yes, at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. Although before that I wanted to enter VGIK, since my mother worked at the Film Studio documentaries. But he entered Moscow State University. And in 1975 I was invited by the great and beloved by me Dmitry Baltermants to the Ogonyok magazine. I received a certificate from the Ogonyok magazine while still a journalism student. I became a photographer for the most important magazine in the country, which all photographers of the Soviet Union dreamed of getting into, and I worked there for 16 years. And then I got an invitation from Time magazine, and photographers from all over the world want to work in Time magazine. Then, again, after winning the competition, I went to California to Brooks University, where I gave a number of workshops on photo reporting. He returned, for some time he worked in the absolutely wonderful magazine Obozrevatel - the golden years - a wonderful magazine and a wonderful team.

And then - there was a German magazine "Focus".

And now here, at the East News Agency, I run the Russian archive. I don't know how I became a photographer - it's all pure coincidence.

RR: Well, are you still filming now? ..

I.G.: I'm filming. But much less frequently. This is a topic for a separate and rather long discussion. I do not like to shoot what is not interesting. I don’t know how to shoot for myself, I haven’t learned. Still, maybe I'll learn - now I'll retire and I'll study. Sometimes you have to stop, I guess. People make stops and then normally start. I don't know what will happen to me in the future. I want to shoot, but I don't know what. I don't know how to say what I would like to say in photographic language. I don't speak other languages. I think more than I do. One of the main reasons, apparently, is that so much has been filmed, and I have been to so many countries, cities, situations, that almost everything has been seen. Life, after all, it can be said that it is endless and limitless, but on the other hand, all this is a few circles that are repeated from century to century. And all our relationships, they are, in general, repeatable. And it is very, very difficult to repeat yourself creatively, you don’t always want to.

Suddenly I will learn.

RR: Thank you very much, Igor, for this conversation and for your work.

Ecology of consumption. People: Pictures with stories from the famous photographer Igor Gavrilov, who has devoted more than 40 years to his difficult profession...

Igor Gavrilov is a living legend of Soviet photojournalism. His work is amazing, each photo is life, not covered up, but caught by surprise. Many brilliant pictures of the author were not published at the time just because they were too believable.

For Igor, the main genre is analytical reporting. The main goal in the work is to photograph the truth, in search of which he traveled all over Russia, worked in 50 foreign countries, photographed in almost all hot spots of the country, on the seventh day after the explosion he flew over the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The publication "Russian Reporter" published material for which 50 frames of the photographer were selected, made by him in various periods of his life - from his student years to recent trips around the planet. Igor spoke about each picture - somewhere in a nutshell, somewhere in detail, and somewhere - with digressions into more general topics.

It turned out to be a poignant story that makes you look at the photos from a completely different angle.

Communal

Late 80s - early 90s. Communal. It looks like a scenery at Mosfilm, where temporary partitions are being built, depicting some kind of life. But this is quite a real apartment.

Symbol of the era

What we lived with for quite a long time, when a person came to the store and saw completely empty shelves there. This is the early 90s or 89th.

"Where have you been?..."

Lonely but wise

Earthquake in Armenia

Lists of people who were found and were able to identify. They hang on the glass - the press center is improvised there in some building - and people come up all the time, read.

When I arrived in Moscow and showed the photographs, Ogonyok gave nominally one spread of fairly calm photographs. And I was in a lot of pain.

First International Hairdressing Competition in Moscow

This is the early 80s. The girls in the picture are models of the competition, they are drying their hair under this beautiful poster. The most interesting thing is that this picture was published in the Ogonyok magazine in those years, before perestroika, but somewhat cropped. The main artist took out large scissors 20 centimeters long from the office and cut off the poster with the words “what are you, oh ... Gavrilov”.

Vysotsky's funeral

Too loose

Special detention center in Moscow on Altufevsky highway. I shot there several times and each time with great interest. Well, what to say? With a lot of pain - it's too pompous. No, there wasn't much pain. But pity the kids. All those who have run away from home, found at railway stations, on the streets, are gathered there.

When they cut this boy's hair, lice jumped from him, about three meters from him. I barely had time to brush it off, I thought that I myself would get lice all over while I was filming it.

Zero waste production

70s, Moscow. Godless alley. Opposite the window where people hand over dishes that have just been washed from the labels in a puddle, there is a Mineralnye Vody store - quite famous in Moscow. In order to hand over the dishes, get money, go opposite and buy wine or beer, which was also sold there, people were engaged in this business.

Life after Afghanistan

Late 80s. Moscow region. This is a rehabilitation hospital for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. There were boys like that. A whole hospital - about 500 people who have just returned from there and saw death. They were difficult for the staff.

1990 America's Best Photograph

November 6, 1990, the task of Time magazine is to remove the design of the city before November 7. This is the last November 7 when a communist demonstration took place. The frame was printed in The Times, and then he entered the best photographs of the year in America - a healthy book, I have it. And the next day there was nothing. That's it, the last demonstration, the last parade. Paragraph.

A photo is not worth the grief inflicted for the sake of this photo.

I was shooting something in Georgia - and suddenly an avalanche came down in Svaneti. One Svan man was at the bottom when an avalanche descended on his village, and together we drove along the mountain roads to the place of the tragedy. Our journey took three or four days. Arrived - the whole village was destroyed. I started filming. There was no one on the streets, absolutely no one. And suddenly I saw these people rising to this remnant of the house - a man, a woman and a child, they carry small glasses with chacha or vodka in their hands. The man has a portrait of his relative who died under the avalanche on his chest. I understand that I can now make quite such a hard shot. They are coming. I know where to do it, I know how to do it. I am waiting. Here they come, I raise the device to my eyes, press it once. The silence is complete - the mountains. And the man looked at me. Behind me is my Svan, with whom I arrived, so he put his hand on my shoulder and says: “He doesn’t like that you are photographing.”

Children in cages

The very first publication in the Ogonyok magazine from places not so remote - earlier in the Soviet Union such materials were not printed. This is a Judicial colony for juvenile delinquents. In four days I made a material that, in general, brought me quite a lot of fame and a lot of medals, was published in the Independent Magazine in English, and was published in many books. Then there was no digital camera, I could not see on the display whether my shadow fell correctly. This is exactly the shade I was looking for. It's in the punishment cell, the guy sits and looks at me, although I didn't even ask him to look.

death road

The beginning of the journey to the Pamirs, the beginning of the 80s. This is one of the most difficult business trips. We drove along the road Khorog - Osh, and this road was called the road of death. There are high mountains, 4.5-5 thousand meters, the road is serpentines, cliffs. And the gearbox flew by our car. If it weren't for the border guards... Everyone there helps each other, because they understand that if you stop on this road for the night, you might not wake up.