Yuriy Rupin was one of the founders of the group “Vremya” (“Time”) — a Kharkiv association of photographers that included Boris Mikhailov and Yevgen Pavlov. However, he is mentioned much less often than his contemporaries. Kateryna Yakovlenko talks about the artist’s photographic and literary experiments.
Among all Kharkiv photographers, Yuriy Rupin seems to remain on the sidelines. The artist died in 2008, leaving behind not only artistic and documentary photo series but also two novels. In them, he describes the Kharkiv artistic environment from which Yevgen Pavlov, Boris Mikhailov, Yuriy Rupin himself, and others emerged. Despite numerous photos and texts, many questions remain about Rupin’s legacy. Who was he primarily — a documentary photographer or an artist experimenting with photography?
Yuriy Rupin was born after World War II in the city of Krasnyi Lyman, Stalin region (now the city of Lyman, Donetsk region). By the late 1950s, he had already acquired a camera and began photographing. After studying at the Sloviansk Technical School, Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, and the Repin Leningrad Academy of Arts, he, together with another photographer, Yevgen Pavlov, founded an informal photo association — the group “Vremya” (“Time”) — at the Kharkiv Regional Photo Club. It included Oleg Malovany, Boris Mikhailov, Hennadiy Tubalev, Oleksandr Suprun, and Oleksandr Sytnichenko.
For 14 years, Rupin worked as a photo correspondent for TASS, the newspapers “Vechirniy Kharkiv” and “Krasnoye Znamya,” as well as a photographer at the Kharkiv Advertising Combine. This journalistic practice inevitably influenced many of Rupin’s series, notably the “May Day Demonstration.”
“You can’t mistake a drunkard for a ballerina”
Not much has been written about Rupin — probably the most thorough statements about his work can be found in his own novels. One of them — “Photographer’s Diary in the KGB Archives” — is written from the perspective of a narrator nicknamed the Photographer, who supposedly belongs to Kharkiv’s photographic circles but adheres to the party line.
It remains a mystery whose voice narrates the story, but all other names in the diary are real. Rupin seems to look at himself and his colleagues from the outside, evaluating their photos, sometimes condemning or disdainfully commenting on certain works. He describes himself like this: “Rupin said that the main thing in photography is not quality, but what is depicted in the photo, because if you photograph some drunk lying on the street in his own urine and make this photo with very good quality, no one will ever mistake this drunk for a prima ballerina.”
Rupin, like many at that time, actively experimented, transforming the image in various ways during printing. For example, he used solarization — a gelatin silver printing method where the optical density of the image decreases, and certain areas of the photo appear “overexposed.” In this way, Rupin seems to strip the photograph of the unnecessary, focusing the viewer’s attention on what is important to the author. This is how the series “Anxiety” was made — primarily, it draws attention to the large eyes of the mother looking directly into the lens.
Interestingly, if you believe the “Diary,” photographers criticized this series as one that “discredits the concept of motherhood.” In Soviet photography, young mothers were depicted next to children, with a baby in their arms or near a stroller; the mother was imagined as fearless and strong, capable of raising a healthy and proper citizen. However, a proper mother certainly should not show her anxiety (except in war-related subjects).
Unusual for Rupin’s photography is also the nudity of the mother’s breasts. Soviet photographers rarely showed a mother breastfeeding to a wide audience because such a subject could evoke associations with the Virgin Mary. For example, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s “Petrograd Madonna” depicts a woman holding a child to her breast, but her breasts are covered with thick clothing. Larisa Kyrylova’s painting also shows a mother breastfeeding, but her face is shyly lowered.
For the first time in the Union: male nudity
This is not the only case where Rupin, contrary to established norms, uses the nude figure. The series “Bathhouse” (also made using solarization) became one of the first in Soviet photography to show the naked male body.
This case is also described in the “Diary”: “Yesterday Rupin brought a new photograph, and I think this really goes beyond decency. He photographed in a men’s bathhouse and then made a ‘solarization’ of this photograph. It’s good that he at least thought to retouch all the indecent places on this photo, which men have and which cannot be shown to anyone because no one should see this, as it is indecent.”
Rupin writes about himself as an innovator who was among the first to dare to show a men’s bathhouse. Women’s bathhouses were already being photographed and published in the magazine “Soviet Photo” (“Sovetskoe Foto”) at that time, and fortunately, the bodies shown in such photos were not erotic — it was a story about hygiene and everyday life. In contrast, the aestheticization of the naked male body could refer to the condemned and “vicious” gay culture. As art historian Tetyana Pavlova writes, “nudity in photography primarily acted frighteningly, and the main connotation of this fear was the sphere of criminal liability.”
The photographer also depicted the naked female body: he believed that this way he conveyed true female beauty. Rupin said: “True human beauty is usually hidden under clothes because clothes are made according to fashion, and fashion changes from time to time, and there is nothing more ridiculous than a photo of a woman dressed in fashion that existed ten or twenty years ago. And on a naked woman, there is no fashionable clothing, and the body remains beautiful always, regardless of what can be put on it.”
Naked women appear in Rupin’s work in the most unexpected places — in the forest, lying in a boat or on the pavement, under an arch. In the photograph “We,” he showed himself and his wife Olena naked. He sits half-turned to the viewer; she has turned her torso toward us and slightly lowered her head. Today, this image can be read as a reference to the story of Adam and Eve. Later, Rupin and his wife will appear together in other photos as well.
Freedom and loneliness
Rupin was one of the first Kharkiv authors to turn to color printing — both in commercial photography and in art. Perhaps one of his most famous color works is “Kharkiv Woman,” in which a young woman stands against the backdrop of a residential area. Tall boots, a short coat, a relaxed pose — the woman seems to manifest her freedom and independence.
Many Kharkiv photographers of that time feature the motif of a dog — often lonely, wandering the deserted city. Rupin is no exception: for example, in the photo “Loneliness,” a yard dog wanders the empty and cold Kharkiv street, from one house to another. This image of a lonely Soviet intellectual in existential search probably best describes the difficult time in which the photographers lived.
At the end of the 1980s, Rupin moved with his family to Vilnius. He opened one of the first private galleries in Tallinn — “MRK,” which lasted three years. A year later, he founded the stock photo agency “Rupinkom,” which operated until the early 2000s. At the same time, he wrote diaries in which he mentioned the group “Vremya” (“Time”).
Rupin died in Vilnius. He left behind only photos and texts. His name is rarely mentioned in publications and books dedicated to photography. However, the spirit of the time remains preserved in his practice, a time that can no longer be touched.
