Every photographer in life has his own starting point, the moment when, when you raise the camera for the next frame, you already understand exactly why you are doing it and what result you want to get. In landscape photography, it is almost impossible to do without this state, without a personal perception of the world around you. It is not difficult to teach a person to press the shutter button, set the correct shutter speed and aperture, and even process and print the received frames. But it is impossible to make you see, feel what you are filming. Everyone comes to this on their own, or does not come ...
The photographs of Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter, or rather his photo albums "Meshcherskaya Side" and "Harmony of the Eternal", which I first saw back in the mid-90s, made a strong impression on me. Then the understanding came that the landscape is not only beautiful picture, sunset or sunrise, mountains, sea or forest... This is, first of all, a state - the state of nature and the state of a photographer who has let what he sees through himself. It is through his eyes that we see all the beauty and diversity of the reality around us. Gippenreiter's works became for me the very starting point that completely changed my attitude to landscape photography...
For 20 years, I was able to collect almost all of his photo books. Friends gave me something, I could find something in second-hand bookshops. They even sent it from Ukraine. But the most powerful memories are of course connected with personal communication. In the spring of 2004, at the "Photocentre" on Gogolevsky, personal exhibition Vadim Evgenievich - "Ascent". It was impossible to miss such an event...
By that time, I knew most of his published work almost to the point. But photographs in large format are difficult to compare with landscape printing, you can only admire what you see. There were many questions. Vadim Evgenievich turned out to be an excellent interlocutor, outwardly strict, but with amazing charm and fantastic energy. We also asked him about the old wooden camera with sheet film, which he never parted with, changing only the optics to a more modern one. There were questions about the technique of shooting.
(Kizhi / photo by V. Gippenreiter)
I also asked him about master classes in landscape photography, whether he plans to hold one. He smiled and, looking with his amazingly piercing eyes, answered: - And what can I teach? Anyone can use a camera today, all this is on the Internet, and cameras are now completely for the lazy - I don’t want to take pictures ... Learn compositions? There are museums for this - everything has already been written hundreds of times, go - look, remember ... But to understand, to feel that you need to shoot right here and now, to see - you can’t teach this, either the photographer has it or not .. ."
(W. Gippenreiter, "Photocentre", 2004)
Gippenreiter spent his entire life shooting with a camera made in 1895. And he himself brought it to the desired condition - for modern cassettes and lenses. And the slope of the rear wall of the chamber allowed us to play with perspective. The ability to move the front wall up and down and sideways - shifts that correct perspective, the basis of widescreen shooting - have been in wooden cameras from the very beginning. These were real professional cameras - he said, remaining true to his cameras to this day ...
(volcanologists against the backdrop of the Tolbachik volcano eruption in 1975 / photo by V. Gippenreiter)
There were many more questions and answers, but for some reason they didn’t stick in my memory at all, but I still remember his works on the walls of the Photo Center ...
(Shore White Sea / photo by V. Gippenreiter)
His archive contains more than 50,000 photographs, mostly taken on color format reversible film. At 87, he was still cheerful and energetic. He continued to ski, which he did not part with all his life ...
(With friends in the foto.ru project, 2004)
There are practically no photographs with the author, which is not surprising. The photographer always shoots himself, and very rarely when someone else shoots him. But quite by accident I found this photo on the net with a taimen from the 1957 video film "In the Sayan Mountains" (the film itself can be viewed)
(frame from the film In the Sayan Mountains)
I will not retell the biography of Vadim Evgenievich, all this has long been on the net in sufficient volume. I will give just a few of his wonderful words that I remember over and over again when I look through the camera viewfinder at amazing beauty the world around us...
- I shoot what I like. You have to bear your own attitude and perception of the landscape. Landscape - first of all, the relationship of your internal state and states of nature. It can be interesting, or it can be indifferent ...
(Lena Pillars / photo by V. Gippenreiter)
- I had such states when I dragged the device all day long - and did not take anything off. When there is no landscape, no mood, no state...
(photo by W. Gippenreiter)
- Here, try to plant five artists so that they draw a portrait of the same person. You will get five different portraits, and each of them is a self-portrait of the artist himself. His attitude, his decision. Same with photography...
(photo by W. Gippenreiter)
- The artist creates something out of nothing, the artist can take something from his head, from his intelligence. A photographer deals with real-life objects. The photographer states the fact with his own attitude. This statement can turn into a work of art if done with the right attitude. In photography, it is very important to convey the state of the moment. In gray weather, for example, some foggy places, a foggy sky, appropriate lighting underfoot, an appropriate general mood. If this mood is conveyed, then the photo can be said to have taken place. And if this state does not exist, then a fake picture is obtained, which has nothing to do with this image. Therefore, there must be a very holistic approach to what you see, your own attitude and the opportunity to realize what you feel. And don't forget about it...
(photo by W. Gippenreiter)
- To feel the landscape well, you need to live in it for some time ...
(photo by W. Gippenreiter)(photo by W. Gippenreiter)
On July 16, 2016, at the age of 99, Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter passed away ...
The legendary Russian photographer, author of almost 50 albums, unique photographs of the most unexplored corners of Russia, Vadim Gippenreiter, has died at the age of 100.
“Vadim Evgenievich died in the country. This is the death of a true legend. He was a legend in many ways. Undoubtedly, he was a legend of Soviet photography of the late and middle Soviet period. He did not live up to 100 years a little, ”the master’s student told TASS. famous photographer Anton Lange.
According to him, in terms of the scale of his contribution to Russian photography, Gippenreiter can only be compared with the most famous American photographer Ansel Adams.
The interlocutor of the agency stressed that Vadim Gippenreiter was the first photographer who took classic shots in the most exotic places in Russia. His authorship belongs to the legendary shooting of the birth of the Tolbachik volcano in 1975, which gained fame all over the world. “Gippenreiter filmed, standing on the edge of the crater, at a huge risk to his life,” said Anton Lange.
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In addition to volcanic eruptions in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, the photographer photographed landscapes of the Russian North, the Urals, the Far East, and Central Asia.
Vadim Gippenreiter was born on April 22, 1917 in Moscow. According to him, from early childhood he was left to himself, walking and studying everything around in a childish inquisitive way. He could sit on the river bank with a fire all night. “Most of his life he lived in the open air, in Moscow - visits. From an early age, he wandered and spent the night in the forest, made fires in bad weather, met the dawn by the river. Waiting for the awakening of the fish, he hypnotized the float of the fishing rod, barely visible in the predawn fog, ”said the master.
He became interested in photography after graduating from the Moscow Art Institute named after Surikov. He himself put the camera on a tripod, covered it with a rag, built a picture on frosted glass, photographed all the relatives. Shooting on glass plates, he himself developed them with red color.
“Many of us in our youth try to prove to ourselves that we are capable of overcoming unusual situations. For me, such a situation was an autonomous life in the forest. Soon I realized that I can kill an animal or a bird, use mushrooms, berries, but why? Everything turned out to be a more difficult task: you need to shoot what you see, turn what you see into visible images. So I’ve been shooting nature all my life, ”said the photographer.
The desire to see with his own eyes the protected corners of nature turned Gippenreiter into a traveler. He traveled almost all of Russia, because, according to the master, it is simply impossible to see all of it. Gippenreiter loved the north most of all. Karelia, Kola Peninsula, Urals, Far East, Chukotka, Commander Islands. He traveled all over the Kuril Islands, visited Lake Baikal several times. The master traveled to Kamchatka for 40 years: “He lived in Kamchatka for a long time, filmed volcanic eruptions; salmon spawning in rivers; brown bears, which can be seen in broad daylight by the river or in the berry tundra. Shooting bears up close when they are out in the open is not a test for the faint of heart and perhaps unwise given their unpredictability and short temper.”
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“I’m going to places where you can’t go by car. The brought photographic material is just a tool that you need to master in order to get this result, ”said the photographer. Vadim Gippenreiter never traveled just like that, he always had clear own goals and tasks. The place of the next photo expedition was always chosen with the expectation of work. And I always had everything on myself: a backpack with a tent, equipment, an ax, a sleeping bag. He always traveled alone to be alone with the place he wanted to capture. In order for the photo to turn out, he was ready to wait several days for the cherished state of the weather. “The seasons in nature have their own tonality, mood. The spring migration of birds is not the same as the autumn one. A rainy autumn with a heavy sky amazes with colorful foliage on withered grass. In winter, everything freezes, but in this silence, life goes on. Changes in nature give rise to different feelings, and photography should convey these changes, ”Gippentreiter said.
At first, his landscape photographs were required as illustrations on the theme “My native country is wide” in albums for party congresses in order to dilute the portraits of general secretaries. The magazine "Change" published essays about the seasons. Landscapes were published in the magazines "Around the World" and "Soviet Union", which was distributed abroad. After a noisy debate in the publishing house "Soviet Artist" the album "Tales of the Russian Forest" was released. The main artist took full responsibility, because there was not a single person in the photographs. But the edition with black-and-white photographs was sold without reaching the shelves. “It was one of the first albums with my text, and now there are 30 of them. They were released in the USA, England, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia. Well, we have, of course,” said Vadim Gippenreiter. His photographs have become the standards of the genre, making his author an internationally recognized master.
All photos of the master are medium and large format slides. For a long time he shot with a wooden camera made in 1895, technically improving it on his own for modern lenses and photosensitive materials. The old wooden case is equipped with the most modern optics and film.
Vadim Gippenreiter is also known for being the first to ski down Elbrus (in 1939), became the first champion of the USSR in downhill and slalom (1937) and the first master of sports of the USSR in alpine skiing (1937).
Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter is the most outstanding landscape photographer in Russia, author of 36 books and albums, traveler, climber, hunter, master of sports and the first champion of the USSR in alpine skiing. A person who has decided to preserve the beauty and grandeur of our country for posterity takes pictures of mostly untouched nature and preserved architectural monuments.
Is it true that you started filming at an early age? Was there a tradition in your family in those years to take pictures of friends and relatives?
Among my numerous relatives, the ability to photograph was a completely natural thing. A camera was in every house - made of mahogany, with accordion fur, chrome or copper parts, it was appropriate in any interior. It's nice to have something like this. The tripods were also wooden. Filmed on glass plates. They knew the technical device to the smallest detail. Names such as Dagor, Tessar, Kompur, Dogmar were well known. They took pictures for any reason - guests came, the ice began to drift on the river, the tree blossomed. Of course, I could not stand aside - from a very early age I helped develop and print photographs.
In the thirties, small-format rangefinder cameras appeared. Then I became the owner of my first "watering can". Something has become more convenient, but something has become more complicated, the direct connection with what you are photographing has been lost. I still sometimes shoot with wooden cameras.
- Do you have any childhood photographs, pictures of relatives and friends from the beginning of the last century?
Yes, and quite a lot. I even have a photo of my father, an officer in the tsarist army who died in 1917. Miraculously preserved. There are photographs of mother, grandfather and grandmother, other relatives.
What do you think is more important: the documentary function of photography or its artistic component? Perhaps such a division is incorrect?
Photography is shackled by its documentary; it is very difficult to turn it into some kind of conventionality, into art. This is a sheet of paper on which real objects are laid, turned into some kind of conditional form. The task of photography is to form a plane. That is, it should be built according to common visual arts laws. In a sense, a photograph can become a work of art if it is made with talent. But it cannot be placed next to graphics, painting or engraving. These are different things, and they have different patterns.
- What is the difference between such a work of art and just a photograph?
When you have a genuine work of art in front of you, something happens to you. A real work of art changes a person, seeing him is the same as getting a new life experience. Everything is rearranged in my head.
- By shooting nature and architectural monuments, you create a unique historical photo archive. Is it conscious?
I don't do photography at all. I always make a book, whether it is published or not. First, I find a place that interests me, worries me, causes a special attitude. It can be an ancient city, nature, or just a view from a single point - from a cliff to the Volga, for example. I look at any object from the point of view of the future album.
- You did a lot of skiing and mountaineering. Did you always have a camera with you?
I was not only involved in these sports. Constantly participated in hiking trips, traveled along rivers and lakes. He devoted a lot of time to hunting. I brought photographs from every trip. The hunter in me has been preserved for life. But the nature of the hunt has changed - the search for the beast has turned into a search for a place, a frame, a state of nature, a search for oneself ...
- Since what year have you been doing photography professionally? When did the hobby become profitable?
Since 1948. After graduating from the institute, I began to shoot sports reports. And then he met the art editor of the Izvestia newspaper Volchek. From a trip to the North, I brought a lot black and white photographs- hunters, old people, swamps, fires, huts. He barely looked at them, immediately understood everything and offered to make the next exposure of Izvestia Windows out of these pictures, that is, put the photographs in shop windows.
Several such "windows" were printed. And for the first time I got good money. Volchek advised: “Shoot as you shoot. Pay no attention to anyone and try not to be like anyone. After Izvestia, my photo essays began to be published in the magazines Smena, Ogonyok, and Around the World. So photography became work.
- Do you have a favorite place to take photos? Maybe there are several? Does the time of year affect the choice of location?
To feel the landscape well, you need to live in it for some time.
Every time I try to imagine what this landscape would look like if it rained, the season changed or the color of the sky changed. A photograph can adequately convey all these possible changes. Landscape - first of all, the relationship of your inner state and the state of nature. It may be interesting, or it may be indifferent. When I shoot in nature, I put up a tent, near which a fire burns around the clock and go in different directions until I find something interesting.
I have been to Baikal twice and have not taken a single shot. Baikal is a very interesting and complex object. To shoot it properly, you have to live there. And in these short trips, I saw only an empty sky and burnt slopes. Nature itself, in all its manifestations, is incredibly active in all seasons. These are always changes that come easily, sunny, then snowfalls, blizzards. The most difficult task is to get away from naturalism. I use light filters, different distances, framing.
I only shoot what interests me. I went to Kamchatka for forty-five years! I made several albums: volcanic eruptions, landscapes, animals, birds... The life of a volcano is the history of the Earth.
- Do you have a favorite camera?
All my tasks are solved by three main lenses, as well as photographic film, which I am already familiar with, and a wooden camera. Today, film technology is so advanced that it approaches optics in terms of capabilities. The 13x8 large format camera has all the slopes, you can see the quality of the surface, there is the possibility of perspective corrections, sharpening of individual plans - this is not the case in ordinary narrow format cameras. The possibilities are expanding. You start doing photography.
- What equipment do you prefer to take with you on trips?
An excessive number of lenses, cameras and photographic materials, of course, complicates the work, distracting with the possibility of many options. In field conditions, every gram counts. Excess technology binds you physically. Therefore, I try to select light models.
- Do you agree that the same place can be filmed a hundred times, showing it in a new way?
Here, try to plant five artists so that they draw a portrait of the same person. You will get five different portraits, and each of them is a self-portrait of the artist himself. His attitude, his decision. Likewise with photography.
Man sees the world stereoscopically. The near object is more convex, the distant one is flatter. My photographs are always closed by something - a distant mountain peak or a heavy sky, again creating a plane. I always make sure that there is some kind of limited area for the foreground and background. The photo should not go to infinity.
- What is photography for you?
Photography is not art. This is a statement of fact. The artist creates his objects, the photographer fixes the existing ones. The only thing that can somehow revive a photo is your own attitude towards it.
In 2010, the AST publishing house released a book-album by V. E. Gippenreiter "My Russia",
which includes amazing photos and best lyrics masters - reflections on art, essays, memoirs.
Many photographs and stories created over the past half century are published for the first time.
In 1934 he began skiing under the guidance of Gustav Deberli (Austria). The first master of sports of the USSR in alpine skiing (1937). The first champion of the USSR in slalom (1937). Champion of the USSR in slalom in 1938. From 1937 to 1960, he was an alpine skiing coach of the Vita and Zenit sports societies.
In 1948 he was educated as a sculptor, graduating from the Moscow Surikov Art Institute. After graduation, he became interested in photography. He was engaged in mountaineering and skiing. He was the first champion of the USSR in downhill skiing in 1937. He also became the first to ski down Elbrus in 1939. In the future, he won the championship of the Soviet Union in alpine skiing three times. Vadim Gippenreiter's photo albums "From Kamchatka" are very famous. He became one of the few who filmed the Tolbachik Eruption in 1975.
Cousin and ex-husband of Yulia Borisovna Gippenreiter. Has three children (two daughters and a son), five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren.
Decree of the President Russian Federation D. A. Medvedev No. 188 dated February 12, 2012 Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter was awarded the Order of Honor.
Works and exhibitions
The author of 28 photo albums on the topics of sports, art, nature, in his archive there are about 50 thousand format slides. Gold medal of the International Exhibition "INTERPRESSPHOTO" (1966). Member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR, member of the Union of Photographers of Russia.
Published photo albums:
- Tales of the Russian forest. M., 1967.
- To the volcanoes of Kamchatka. M., 1970.
- Teberda - Dombay. M., 1970.
- Zaonezhie. Museum-reserve in the open air. M., 1972.
- Commanders. M., 1972.
- Novgorod. M., 1976.
- Peaks ahead. In the mountains of Kabardino-Balkaria. M., 1978.
- The birth of a volcano M., 1979.
- Meshcherskaya side. M., 1981.
- Melodies of the Russian forest. M., 1983.
- Seasons. M., 1987.
- Middle Asia. Architectural monuments IX-XIX centuries M., 1987.
- Eternal harmony. Ancient art of Karelia. Petrozavodsk, 1994. ISBN 5-88165-004-2.
I was going to Vadim Gippenreiter as if on a first date: I was worried, nervous, late. We haven't seen him for a long time. He means a lot to me - and inhuman and photographic. There are such rare magical people. Vadim Evgenievich is one of them. When I worked at Ogonyok, I came to him for photographs. We talked, he talked about his life and its ups and downs. Strange, but I never felt the difference in age. There was never a feeling that he was a person of another generation, lost in time, lagged behind, or did not understand something in this life. He was absolutely aware of everything, absolutely modern. And I adopted his longevity formula “not to sit on the couch, but to move”. When I feel really bad, I remember him, and it becomes easier for me, a way out of a seemingly completely hopeless situation arises by itself.
Text: Natalya Udartseva.
He impressed me from the first meeting. It was impossible to believe that the energetic, fit man was over seventy years old. He differed sharply from familiar photographers: taciturnity, the scale of personality and thinking, self-esteem, lack of envy, the ability to keep a distance in communication, the weight of judgments, behind which one felt a huge experience. And something else that is difficult to describe in words, which is sometimes called the word "energy", putting different meanings into it.
Thanks to Gippenreiter, our conversations with him, I realized that photography is the concentration of the energy of the photographer and the filmed, the convergence at a point in time of the energy of the photographer, the object and the energy of space. And the frame is just a way of archiving and transferring this energy to the viewer. If a photograph has powerful energy, it hits the viewer right in the solar plexus. The same thing happens in painting and other visual arts. Works charged with the energy of creation live for a long time and make their way to the surface through the thickness of time, remain in the history of art, regardless of when they were made.
And with my publication in Ogonyok about Vadim Gippenreiter, the following happened. I wrote the text, picked up the pictures and left for the photography festival in Arles. When I returned, I found that the text was cut in half, deciding to give large photographs. The editor on duty did not read much, just cut the “tail”. It turned out to be complete nonsense. I called Vadim Evgenievich to apologize. He laughed and told me not to worry, so as not to spoil the complexion.
Another time, the Ogonyok scanner, having received Vadim Evgenievich's slide “Meshcher. The flood of the river Pra”, decided to “improve” it and made the sky blue and the water greenish. We managed to fix it in the signature strips.
This time, as usual, Vadim Evgenievich came out to meet me. He shook my hand firmly. The eyes are alive. Posture is the same. He said that he does not go anywhere, but every day he goes for a walk and walks about a kilometer. His daughter Maria Vadimovna, surprisingly similar to her father, sorts through his archives and prepares a four-volume edition of Vadim Gippenreiter for publication. Vadim Evgenievich helps her. An album that will include all of his the best photos for 60 years of work - his old dream.
Two years ago, Vadim Evgenievich went skiing. Then he was hit by a tram when he was going to the clinic. He was ill for a long time, Maria Vadimovna looked after him, put him on his feet. I had to forget about trips to the mountains.
This year is the anniversary for the Master. On April 22, he turned 95 years old. On May 3, in the Kremlin, the President presented him with the Order of Honor for great services in the development of national culture and art, and many years of fruitful activity.
Exhibition of his works “Ancient Monuments of Russia. Golden Ring” was held with great success in April at the exhibition complex “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman”. His works are actively bought by collectors. His name is a brand in itself. He introduced fashion to Kamchatka, the Commanders and the Kuriles. There is not a single accomplished landscape photographer who has not followed in the footsteps of Gippenreiter.
When I think about the scale and significance of Vadim Evgenievich's work in world photography, I understand that it is no less than the significance of, for example, Ansel Adams. Only he preferred black and white film, and Vadim Gippenreiter preferred color. Their statements about shooting nature, about the technique of photographing in many respects coincide, as if they were familiar, how their love for nature, inner freedom and the power of the impression that their technically flawless works make in common.
He was born on April 22, 1917 in the village of Potylikh, opposite the current Luzhniki. He does not remember his father, he was killed in 1917. My father was an officer in the tsarist army, awarded the Order of St. Anne four times for bravery. Vadim Evgenievich's mother is from peasants, a rural teacher. Vadim Gippenreiter had to start earning money early - unloading a barge with firewood, transporting sand from the river to the road in a wheelbarrow, people in a boat from one bank of the Moscow River to the other.
I went to school without any problems. After a decade, he entered the Faculty of Biology at Moscow University - he was interested in everything related to nature. Three months after admission, he was expelled due to his father's noble origin. Admitted to medical school. A special sports course was opened there, and by that time Vadim had become the champion of the USSR in alpine skiing. His mentor was skier Gustav Deberl, a professional guide in the Austrian Alps.
Vadim Evgenievich managed to do everything: play rugby, ski jumping, run a marathon. He easily studied at the institute, received an increased scholarship. In his free time, he went to the studio, studied drawing. In 1937, trials began against the enemies of the people, and in 1939, the war with Finland began. All skiers were mobilized, including Vadim Evgenyevich, but two days later they were allowed to go home. He parted ways with medicine after studying for three years. In the autumn of 1940 he became a student at the Moscow Art Institute. In 1941, the war broke out. A summons came from the military registration and enlistment office - Gippenreiter came with things, but he was released "until further notice." The Moscow Art Institute was evacuated to Samarkand. Classes continued interspersed with agricultural work. Among the teachers were great artists: Robert Falk, Vladimir Favorsky, Alexander Matveev.
At the end of the winter of 1945, the institute was returned to Moscow. Classes continued in cold rooms. The work was difficult. A stable income was given only by work as a sports coach. In 1948, Vadim graduated from the institute, having received a sculptor's diploma, but the work did not get better: the personality cult flourished, they paid only for portraits of leaders and shock workers of socialist labor. Vadim Evgenievich took up photography.
First I shot sports. Then he became interested in hunting and "through hunting came to shooting nature in all its manifestations." For the first time he received good money for his photo essays, having been printed in Izvestia Windows. I forever remembered the words of the art editor of Izvestia Volchek: “Shoot as you shoot. Pay no attention to anyone. Everyone shoots in their own way. Try to be like no one else."
After Okon Izvestia, photo essays by Vadim Gippenreiter began to be published in the magazines Smena, Ogonyok, and Around the World. From that moment on, photography became work, and Vadim Evgenievich was already thinking not about one single photo, but about a topic:
“I don’t do photography at all. I always make a book, whether it is published or not. I only have an idea, which I methodically string onto visual material. First, I find a place that attracts me, interests, worries, causes a special attitude. It can be an ancient city, the nature of some region, or just a view from a single point. I look at any object from the point of view of the future album.
Khrushchev's thaw has come. His photographs of architectural monuments and landscapes began to be published in magazines, but there was no permanent work. In 1959, Gippenreiter was admitted to the Union of Journalists of the USSR, despite the fact that he was not on the staff of any editorial office. From expeditions, difficult hikes, from the volcanoes of Kamchatka, whaling, he brought materials that magazines willingly printed. Publishing houses became interested in his photo essays and the first albums with his photographs were published: "Hunter's Handbook" (1955), "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" (1964), "In the mountains of Karachay-Cherkessia" (1967).
In 1967, an album about nature without a single person, Tales of the Russian Forest, was released. The publishing house's chief artist took responsibility for the "apolitical" nature of the book and the fact that it was supposed to end up in stores. The book has been swept off the shelves!
He was not a pioneer and a member of the Komsomol, and did not enter the staff of any editorial office, not a single publishing house. All his life he was an independent photographer, whose name was more known in the West than in Russia.
Is there anything you regret or didn't get to do? I asked Vadim Evgenievich in parting.
"I don't regret anything," he answered curtly.
Vadim Gippenreiter about photography. From the book "My Russia". AST, 2011
“Photography is not art per se. This is a statement of fact. The artist creates his objects, the photographer states the existing ones. The only way a photograph can be “raised” is by its own attitude, by trying to realize this attitude in some images.”
“I shoot what I like. You have to carry your own attitude and perception of the landscape. The landscape is, first of all, the relationship between your inner state and the state of nature. It can be interesting, or it can be indifferent.”
“To really feel the landscape, you have to live in it for a while.”
“Nature itself, in all its manifestations, in all its seasons, is incredibly active. These are always changes that come easily, sunny, then snowfalls, blizzards. When I developed it myself, I regulated something with the development, introduced some elements of conventionality with the help of filters.
The most difficult task is to get away from naturalism. I use light filters, different distances, framing.”
“This is my attitude, my way of building, among a thousand others I recognize it. To plant five artists, in front of them - one person, so that all five of them would draw one - there will be five different portraits, that is, it will be nothing more than a self-portrait of each of the artists. This is his attitude, his decision, his task. I decide about the same thing when I shoot nature. The way I present it. I shoot only what interests me. I know for sure that if I somehow perceived it, I liked it myself, then sooner or later it will find application. I liked it - there are those who will also like it, who will somehow enter into this business.
“I traveled to Kamchatka for forty-five years. Made several albums: eruptions, landscapes, animals, birds. From the first to the last eruption, which lasted almost a year, I stuck out on Tobachik, took pictures, kept diaries. The life of a volcano is the history of the Earth."
“A still life is, first of all, a mood, its own and the mood of the objects from which it is composed. I have two different types still lifes: some are natural, with branches, vegetables, fruits, and others are conceptual. They are, in general, the same, although they give a completely different feeling.
Before putting a still life, you need to imagine these objects in your head. It is pointless to rearrange them from place to place and see what happens. Until you imagine, there will be no clarity in this. Still life needs to be organized so that everything is organic and meaningful. And, of course, the quality of the surface must be read.
The background can be different, as well as the lighting.
Still life in photography solves the same problems as in painting - the relationship of objects with the plane. By plane is meant the creation of space. As between two walls of a flat aquarium: so that the plane does not collapse from behind and is framed in front. The bas-relief is built on this principle. To pierce the surface into infinity means to destroy the plane.
When creating a composition, everything must be subject to rhythm. There is a certain rhythm in the relationship between objects, while there should not be many objects: a still life of two, three or five objects solves the same problems as a multi-figure setting.
“All temples have always been placed in the most beautiful places, and the temples visually united the vast territory. They became the center of the whole region. The temple is like a monument around which all the most important events of history develop, human life. And earlier the temples were close in spirit to the human condition.
“Material and photographic equipment play a big role. An excessive number of lenses, cameras and photographic materials complicate the work, distracting with the possibility of many options. In addition, they are physically tied up in field expedition conditions, when every gram is registered - you carry everything on yourself. Three main lenses solve all my tasks. Also photographic film, which I already know, and a wooden camera. The 13×18 large format camera has all the slopes, you can see the quality of the surface, there is the possibility of perspective corrections, sharpening of individual plans, which is not the case in ordinary narrow format cameras. Working with a large-format device requires a lot, expands the possibilities. You start really taking pictures.
Appeal to fans of the talent of Vadim Gippenreiter
The Photographic Heritage of Vadim Gippenreiter Foundation appeals to everyone who is not indifferent to the work of Vadim Gippenreiter with a request to support the project of publishing the author's photo album "Reserved Russia".
Feasible financial assistance in the publication will make it possible to fulfill Vadim Evgenievich's old dream - to publish a book that would incorporate all the best from his vast archive, collected over 60 years of active filming.
The proposed publication is a four-volume book consisting of equivalent logical parts that cover completely emotionally different regions of Russia: “The Nature of the Middle Strip”, “Great Mountains and Rivers of Russia” (Caucasus, Urals, Sayans, Siberia), “Russian North” and "The Land of Great Volcanoes and Islands" (Kurils, Commanders, Kamchatka). Along with well famous works The author's album will include photographs that have never been published before. This album, dedicated to reserved Russia, will be the final work of Vadim Evgenievich.
On April 22, Vadim Evgenievich turned 95 years old, and the publication of this album will be his best gift to him.
Also, within the framework of the anniversary year, we plan to hold a large photo exhibition "Reserved Russia" and coincide with the release of this album. To raise funds, we offer for sale on special conditions works by Vadim Gippenreiter to start the formation of corporate collections, private collections and interior design (collection of ten works worth $20,000). The work was done in modern technology, have a certificate of origin, signed by the author. It is also possible to purchase a limited edition of the author's future book (100 copies - $ 20,000).
The publication of the photo album "Reserved Russia" and the exhibition of the same name are planned at the expense of funds raised by the Foundation, and the implementation of the album will allow collecting necessary funds to continue working with the archive to digitize and organize it, as well as to hold future photo exhibitions.
The total cost of the project is $80,000. We welcome any financial donations, both from individuals and organizations. We will be grateful for the help and support at the beginning of a long journey, which we hope to go through together with fans of the talent of Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter.
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