Yevhen Pavlov — a well-known Kharkiv photographer, co-founder (together with Yuriy Rupin) of the Kharkiv photographic group “Vremya”. Pavlov’s works have been exhibited at various international exhibitions, and in recent years they have increasingly appeared at Ukrainian art exhibitions where we try to understand our own art history.
This conversation was recorded in 2017 in Kharkiv at the Pavlovs’ workshop, or rather in the premises of the GRAFPROM design studio, founded by Ilya Pavlov and Masha Norazyan. But the overall mood and place allow me to call this space precisely a “workshop,” where an atmosphere of creativity, openness, liveliness, and spontaneity reigns.
This text is published today in connection with the PinchukArtCentre project “Forbidden Image” — a solo exhibition of Boris Mikhailov and the group exhibition “Crossing the Line. Kharkiv School of Photography,” which presents a fairly large body of works by Yevhen Pavlov, including his famous series “Violin,” “1×7,” “Orvochrome,” “Mythologies,” “Psychosis.” This text is an excerpt from a 4-hour conversation with Yevhen Pavlov. Although it seems you know almost all the artist’s series and works, every conversation with him is a renewal and inspiration, a bright intellectual breath of non-speculative communication.
“Self-portrait,” 2018
I would like to address the origins, the activities of the group “Vremya.” Today it seems like such an alternative photographic movement. However, this movement was formed and emerged within official photo clubs, which, in turn, existed at state enterprises. At what point did what the group “Vremya” created become labeled as alternative, underground art, and how did this connection between official and unofficial happen? On the one hand, the photo club was at an enterprise, so you as a subject, an author, belonged to some extent to that enterprise, but on the other hand, you were making photos that did not quite fit the overall picture of official Soviet photography. How did you manage to balance in this situation, and how did the group “Vremya” exist at all?
The context you described is correct. Indeed, people who felt that photography was something more than what they saw in everyday life gathered at photo clubs. Since photo clubs varied in size, naturally, manifestations of some underground movement, dissent were most pronounced where many people gathered. In Kharkiv, there was a regional club at the House of Trade Unions on Gamarnik Street. It had over a hundred members, and we gladly met there on Thursdays — it was an evening you awaited all week. It was intoxicating — meeting people who shared your interest in photography. How to reconcile underground dissent and the official status of the club? No way! The conflict between the group “Vremya” and the regional photo club was precisely on this level. The group “Vremya” demanded from the club the opportunities it envisioned in photography and by its very existence demanded to exhibit our works.
So the photo club implied exhibition activities?
Naturally. It was a whole network of artistic amateur activities. The regional photo club was part of the Regional House of Artistic Amateur Activities as one of its structures. These were all budget state organizations, and naturally, they paid money for the photo club’s existence, supporting it, and they had a say in determining what the report exhibitions should be like.
“Untitled,” 1974
“Untitled” (Portrait of Borya Kagan), 1974-1976
“Self-portrait,” 1975
What else did they provide?
We had equipment that could be rented. They could print photo works if the author did not print them himself, for these very report exhibitions. They provided premises where you could gather in any weather. They arranged certain creative meetings with people necessary for the development of photo culture. The principle on which the group “Vremya” was created, of course, contradicted the purpose of the regional photo club. Since Zhdanov’s times, any “groupism” was categorically condemned. And as soon as the word “group” was used, the bureaucrat’s mind immediately recalled some directive instructional materials forbidding any group work of creative workers. And although photography, perhaps even to our then happiness (in terms of safety), was not considered art, the taboo on “grouping” was nevertheless not lifted. When we began to declare ourselves as the group “Vremya,” it already alarmed the director of the House of Artistic Amateur Activities.
“Alone with oneself,” 1987
How did you declare yourselves? Did you write a manifesto or was it an oral history?
Since we all communicated live among ourselves, naturally it was oral information. And when we exhibited at regional report exhibitions, we began to write group “Vremya.” Already within the regional photo club, we were isolated into a kind of flock. The group “Vremya” paved a certain path along which more or less everyone else walked, not noticing that this path was paved. People are such that something exists as a given. We are not interested in how this given arose. Photography, criticized by everyone, is a completely hopeless occupation from the point of view of art: according to the then ideological version of art theory, photography had no rights to it. Because it had such disgusting features as naturalism. You have to take the formulation of socialist realism and see if photography fits into socialist realism? It turns out that in some way it can be accepted, with reservations, if it serves the party’s cause, that is, if it is journalistic. And journalists in the Soviet Union were instruments of ideology. But this profession was quite free in relation to a person who worked at a factory. It didn’t matter if he was an engineer or a locksmith, he had to be at that factory “from start to finish.” Even during breaks, people usually did not leave the factory premises. And in this “camp” life, almost the entire adult working population was covered. If you worked as a journalist, it meant you could walk wherever you wanted, but directed to the place you had to get to. And this alone made this work attractive. If you were a photojournalist, you could raise your camera somewhere, shoot without fear that you would be dragged by the sleeve to the police. Or the police officer himself would not approach and ask what you were doing because you could proudly show your booklet and say: “I am a journalist”. This was a kind of protective document. And the figure of any other photographer — not a journalist — was a despised figure of a semi-educated invalid standing by a monument, with photos hanging on a tripod against the background of this monument, and some shabby bellows camera — also on a tripod. And he, shivering, stands near this monument, sniffling, gloomily and passively waiting for a client. Such a collective image of a photographer. Completely unsympathetic.
But being a photojournalist in Soviet times was not a very good fate, at least for me. It all depended on how compatible you were with the tasks journalism set for itself. At first, we did not see this difference. I thought it was possible to combine our energetic impulse with journalism. Then it seemed possible. As I moved away from youth, the divergence between journalism and what I wanted to say increased and increased until it crystallized in the awareness that there is an informational and an image language. Everything related to the Soviet was inclined to a special informational language, and I was not interested in further cooperation with a state that was breaking arms. When I entered film school, I was under the illusion that cinema was art. When I began to study and got into the topic a bit, I realized that cinema becomes art only in 3-5% of what is shot on film. Everything else is film production for the entertainment of the “working people.”
From the series “Mythologies,” 1988
Let’s recall your exhibition “Anonymous Society.” The essence of that society was such that everything was built, like in Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” on the principle of cutting heads. As soon as someone sticks out, that head is cut. That is, the whole society had to be monolithic, one-level, so that there was no protrusion of the Self. Then they talked a lot about “yachestvo” (cliquishness). And what is yachestvo: a negative depiction of a situation when a person demonstrates his personal qualities. Personal qualities should be used with caution so that, God forbid, you do not stand out from the crowd. Why were stilyagi (hipsters) persecuted in their time? It was a natural rebellion of the young — “to be not like everyone else.” But people in the mass were one hundred percent zombified beings, not realizing it themselves. Any person who realized himself as a personality and did not want to extinguish it already entered into conflict with the environment. The innovation of the group “Vremya” was that it began to stand for the right of a person to express personal subjective interests through photography — the vital biologism of existence, its emphasized apoliticism, its different intellectual power, a different intellectual quality. Precisely to express! And there was another driving force — the need to make photography art in the eyes of others. So much effort was spent, at least in my life, to tell people every time “this is art, this is art” and to prove that it is art. And from this follows the need to make this photography deliberately noticeable by other means, in particular, by shock value. To make people start thinking about photography, it must be noticed. Therefore, in the group “Vremya,” shock value plays an important role. I don’t know if these words were spoken then, but in retrospect, reflecting on that time, I believe that this subconscious need to shock people arose from the objective necessity to make photography a noticeable phenomenon when you subjectivize your pictures through form.
From the series “Mythologies,” 1988
How did the group “Vremya” dissolve?
Everyone asks when the group “Vremya” ended? The thing is, there is no definite answer to this question. While the group existed within the photo club, its existence was clearly outlined because it stood out against the club’s activities. But they could not disperse the group. They had no power because we did not ask them for money, were not on staff, we were free people. In the literal sense, they could not forbid us, so they simply dissolved the photo club. The group ceased to be noticeable because they removed the background on which it was visible. And what other background? The life of Kharkiv? That is not a background because to be visible against it, you had to have the opportunity to exhibit your works. And who would hang these works? So it can be said that with the dissolution of the photo club, it looked like the group “Vremya” was dissolved. But this is also not true. The group gathered not to be inside something, but to be together, and this together can be of different degrees of association and dissociation over extended time.
“Self-portrait,” 1976
Once long ago I came and you said that in the 1970s everything was connected with super-effort, and one of these super-efforts was the desire to prove that photography is still art, you wanted somehow to legitimize photography. What is this connected with? If there was such a desire to prove that it is art, did you have predecessors, considering that Kharkiv is a city with an avant-garde tradition: theater, constructivist architecture, etc.?
We ourselves were surprised that we appeared as if on a wasteland. I say as if because today I understand the full existence of that environment. Living in one city, each of us had his own everyday environment, and its content was different for each. For example, Malevany, Tubalev, and Borya Mikhailov (Oleg Malevany, Gennady Tubalev, Boris Mikhailov — all members of the group “Vremya” — ed.), living in the city center since childhood, had their own circle of acquaintances determined by the culture typical of central Kharkiv. I always lived on the outskirts, in a proletarian district of quite bandit content. The word “culture” was not very friendly there. It was the tractor factory (referring to the Kharkiv Tractor Plant area) and nearby. Rupin came from Krasnyi Lyman (Donetsk region) and had a similar story. Makienko was also near the tractor factory with me, but he came from a family of employees, which gave a certain color to his image. Living in one city, we all represented its different layers. Suprun spent his childhood in the suburbs and only became a city dweller forever after entering KhPI (Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute). These markings follow a person from childhood throughout life and influence subsequent decisions and movement in society. Personally, it seemed to me that we appeared out of nowhere. Later I learned that Borya attended Vladimir Grigorov. Malevany and Tubalev studied in Grigorov’s circle. And Grigorov was an artist who led a photo circle at the “Stroitel” Palace of Culture. Directors brought their film premieres to this Palace of Culture, which were significant for the intelligentsia. For example, Tarkovsky brought his films and showed them at the “Stroitel” Palace of Culture and came himself.
Grigorov was an artist who communicated with his “circle members” on a special cultural level. It is no coincidence that Malevany and Tubalev attended there. Based on this circle, they made their exhibition at the “Stroitel” Palace of Culture, through which I learned their names back in 1967. I saw these photographs and thought, “Wow! I thought that such photography should be made. And I did not suspect that there were such people in Kharkiv.” I was struck to the heart that there are people in Kharkiv who make photography that I think of as real. Only later did I meet them at the regional photo club. Today this cultural history begins to clarify. By the way, Tanya (referring to Tatyana Pavlova — art historian, photography historian — ed.) described in her book how through Grigorov a chain from Vasyl Yermilov and Boris Kosarev indirectly reached us. Yermilov died only in 1968, and Kosarev in 1997. In theory, we could have communicated with them, but other names were more well-known.
“Portrait of Father,” 1967-1992. From the series “Total Photography” (1965-1994)
What names were well-known?
The most notorious at that time was Sizikov — the Kharkiv chairman of the Union of Artists. He was a completely reactionary figure. Somehow it happened that creative unions were headed not by leading artists but by appointees of the regional party committee. But each of us had a different cultural environment in which we developed as photographers, as personalities. Borya, Oleg, and Gena, living in the center, knew many artists… Because this one studied at school with them; that one knows them because he lives in the neighboring yard; that one has a workshop nearby. The world is small, especially in the center of a city like Kharkiv. Everyone knows each other by face. My outlook was limited to what I read in books and magazines. But I did not read about Kharkiv artists.
“Eclipse,” 1999
I have another question in the context of the exhibition “Anonymous Society,” where two of your series “Eclipse” and “Life of the Factory” are shown, based on anonymous photography. One of the exhibition’s questions is precisely about the manifestation of voice, or rather the possibility of its manifestation. How to understand anonymous? On the one hand, it can be perceived as grayness, facelessness, but on the other hand, in criminology, it is confidential information, witness protection; on the third hand, anonymity as a denunciation. Anonymity can also be perceived as an innate or inherited desire not to stand out above the masses. What is your process of working with anonymous photography, with an anonymous archive connected to?
From the series “Life of Factories,” 1990
At one time, I made many efforts to research photographic language that would equate photography with art in its accepted categories. Hence — complex montages, a certain quality of works so that people would have no objections to the assertion that photography is art. For example, technological sophistication. So a person would look and say, “Well, of course, this is not simple photography.” Being involved in this, serving the idea of photography as art, for a long time I somewhat underestimated the direct photography I had taken all my life. And when the need to prove that photography is art was exhausted, then the feeling of love for direct, pure photography, which had been pushed to the background, was activated. A belated love for pure photography. When I began to move along this path of self-purification and self-analysis, I realized that I was dealing with a somewhat hidden phenomenon that I needed to decipher for myself. I say to my friend in the army, architect Borya Kagan (we served together), “Bob, look at this picture!” And he says, “Show me where it is beautiful?” Remembering Borya Kagan like this, I ask myself: “Where in the photograph I am looking at is the most attractive point that I truly react to?” It may lie on the periphery. I came to a simple conclusion that in anonymous photography the main content is often on the periphery. It is not colored by any subjective distortion because the photographer, even the most unskilled, strives to be subjective, not realizing it. Because there was always such an imperative “make it better, beautiful”. It flashed in minds as a desire to clear the space of the unnecessary. I think that the place where the photographer’s will is not directed preserves its divine purity. Although it may be dirt. One can speak in theological or other terms, but existence has its untouched forms, and as long as a person does not touch or distort them according to his tastes, it carries the fullness of information about that moment in time. On the periphery of the frame, it is most vivid. In anonymous photographs, there is little distillation of space. When an amateur shoots, he lacks the knowledge and skills to distort this space with his subjectivity. And the more naive the photographer, the cleaner the foreground, and the camera shoots with such details that the human eye never sees. And he will see it only when he gets the photo print. And the experience is that as the photographer develops professionally, he begins to see a lot in the direct, physical sense of the word, throughout the field of vision. That is, for a photographer, there is no peripheral space — he sees everything. Suppose I look at you. If I were not a photographer, I would see only you, and not everything else. But I already have the skill of vision, and besides you, I notice that — there, there, or there. And if I photograph you and look at the print, I will not be surprised by anything. But if I show it to another person and say: “Did you see this? Did you see that?” “No, I did not see.” This is what distinguishes a photographer. But if a person conscientiously examines a painting, he will, of course, see everything. He may not be able to explain it but will feel that something important emanates from it. Suppose you look at a photograph from the 1930s. The people themselves are amazing. Each generation is its own breed of people. Each generation differs by a complex of mindsets, common reactions to some life phenomena. If you take time and slice it like a roll — each generation has its own “sausage” of time.
From the series “Life of Factories,” 1990
From the series “Life of Factories,” 1990
In its value system.
Yes, and it forms the topography of the face. Our generation reacted with its inherent temperament. And we have common wrinkles on the face, squinting eyes, gestures, intonation level, some emotional quirks, character of pressure, energy of monologue. In your generation, everything may be diametrically opposite. And if you speak from these positions, we have no points of contact. The generation gap arises from this. It can be avoided if you realize what the difference is. Not that your forehead is clean, and ours is all wrinkled, but that there are certain values that are not transient. In a sense, when you look at graduates of the 1930s school, you cannot distinguish them. That is, the cultural climate, common reactions, common interests create their mimic traces on faces. And ultimately, each generation has common mimic traces. And for a person distant in time by 40 or 60 years, these traces are the most important sign of their commonality. They so overshadow the person’s personality that you ask yourself: how did they distinguish each other?
“Landscape with Giraffe,” 1989
Essentially, anonymous photography accumulates this information.
Yes, anonymous photography is essentially an unbiased, perhaps not very skillful, but thereby only winning document that has conserved a fractal of time. Our sensitivity lies in the fact that we somehow feel the nature of the time in which we live. I imagine it like this: time is not a word, it is a heterogeneously structured flow. When you come into contact with it, you react to this heterogeneity. This reaction can be described by the word “relevance.” At some point, some thought, feeling comes, and we cannot ignore them. Because it is experienced as a necessity connected with the given moment. At the same time, you notice that something similar happens with other people, allowing the thought that this is the product and consequence of something common to us, beyond our senses. This I feel as time.
You spoke about the zombification of that reality, but do you think we are not experiencing some new wave of zombification now?
As long as there is state power or some sufficiently strong monopoly group that wants to influence people, believing that these people will be theirs, for whatever purpose, whether they are their buyers or their warriors, it logically comes to the need to prepare these people for themselves. And this process today is called zombification. It consists in creating some conditional, unconscious reflexes that lead a person along a certain behavioral path and bring about the necessary result for the rulers. As long as some ruling people need to form their henchmen or multiply the ranks of “party members,” there will be attempts at zombification.
From the series “Violin,” 1972
You once said that your art was then oriented towards a narrow group of psychotherapists, that you yourselves were psychotherapists for each other. Who was the audience besides the close circle?
The audience was all those people whom life somehow brought together and to whom I considered it possible to show my works. Information spread by word of mouth. If there was a slide festival, a poster was made. We showed each other. Another form was an exhibition, but that was mostly after perestroika (except for the scandalous 1983 exhibition, which was closed on the first day). Looking back now, I realize that in the desire to demonstrate, we were excessively persistent. Borya definitely noticed that our desire to show photographs reached rudeness. We were so blinded by this need.
What caused this need?
When people meet at a certain age, they want to show each other what they live by. And if you feel that you have made a step compared to your yesterday self, and this step made you more significant, you want to share it. And probably photography was such a tool in this sense. That is, we parted ways then, and I made new pictures, and now I am different, and my pictures speak about it. Probably, the moment of self-affirmation was decisive.
“Untitled,” 1975
Now the artistic practice of many artists is built on reflecting on the Soviet past, heritage, values. There is a term “nostalgia without memory,” when you talk about, evaluate an experience you did not directly live through. In Soviet times, such values as respect, love were also declared, which are universal in any society. How do you understand Soviet values for yourself?
The thing is, there are values declared in the Soviet period, and there is the real implementation of some value system. And the distance between them is huge. A simple example: the constitution adopted by Stalin in 1936 was “the most democratic on Earth,” but it did not save the Soviet people from the GULAGs and all its subsequent fate.
Between the declared document, which carries the main values of the life of a Soviet person, and his real life — there is a considerable distance. Do you think we had some special worldview or goal to be dissidents, heroes, etc.? No! We behaved like people who want a normal human life. It was a struggle for the norm of life. This included simple, not some liberated-absolute, freedom. It was the need to say what you think, the necessity of sincerity, which saves the energy of being. And when moments of sincerity appeared, they gave cathartic pleasure. That is, catharsis could be earned on the spot — by telling the truth. You just have to understand that truth is not the ultimate truth. Truth is just your honest statement about what you feel about this. But this was precisely closed! It was forbidden to be simply biologically expedient, which led to a neurotic situation. Because if this were allowed, tomorrow we would demand another freedom, the day after tomorrow another, and they did not need it, they would lose slaves. My father constantly said: “You change jobs so often. They will judge you as a flyer.” He remembered Stalin’s times well, preserved these fears. I said: “Dad! Look: after school, I was a locksmith-pattern maker; a technician at the university; an engineer-economist at UkrGazProm; a senior engineer at the All-Union Research Institute for Air Conditioning and Ventilation; a senior engineer and head of the film-photo laboratory at the Institute of Orthopedics, and with each step my salary increased”. But the fear was still deeper than the mind. Our behavior then could be qualified as dissent, but it was not an end in itself.
“Untitled,” 1968-1991. From the series “Total Photography” (1965-1994)
But in the 1990s many built their careers as “dissident” post factum…
That’s why I don’t like talks about the KGB. Then it turns out that a person’s value is measured only by how the KGB treated him. They look for some spice in this. But your communication with a person arose from another motivation. And this question seems to negate it. It can be asked to another person who will tell you even more about the KGB. At some point, the biography, the life of a photographer or artist became just a game in this formula “KGB — person.” So many people abuse it that it becomes bad form.
Art in this sense is a good form. You show it, it is not a violent gesture. Whoever wants — watches, and maybe reacts. And most likely, people perceive not the meanings we put into them. No need to go far: we looked at Soviet painting with sadness because, first of all, we read ideological mythologemes from it. Then the Soviet pain began to subside, and it turned out that Sergey Gerasimov’s “Collective Farm Holiday” is such a great painting! The ideologeme goes away, and painting in all its professionalism appears fully, and the reaction to it changes. And this gives reason to think that everything you do, what you put in, will not necessarily be read with the same meanings. The new generation will put their relevance and content there. And probably this is right, as long as the picture gives reason to cash out these contents.
“Untitled,” 1974
Tetiana Kochubinska
Comment type: Research Platform Publications
Author: Tetiana Kochubinska