Dmitry, you make documentary photographs. But at the end of the day, these are simply frozen stills from real life, moments caught in time.  As a rule this type of photography is considered more journalistic than artistic.

Yet you do a balancing act between journalism on the one hand and art on the other, and the result is definitely works of art.  How do you manage this?  What is it you see in your mind’s eye at the moment you press the button on the camera?



- Images.



- Chance images?  What do you mean by an ‘image’?

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- Everyday life situations around me that I find interesting - natural, unforced, open, at times intimate, moments when facial expressions and gestures express a person’s inner world.(…_

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- But doesn’t this mean intruding into peoples’ private lives?

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- It does.

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- And how do you feel about this?

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- Perfectly alright.

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- And how do your subjects feel about this?

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- People tend not to object.  Although occasionally I have to take a photograph against a person’s wishes.

I don’t like doing this, but I can’t help it.

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- I see.  Life presents images and you just happen to be there, a hapless photographer.  But what if people were to beat you with sticks?

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- People usually beat thieves with sticks, and I am not a thief.  Let me explain something.  There’s more to this than just pressing a button.  For one thing I have a friendly smile.  I smile to people.  Smiling encourages contact and conversation, which I am open to.

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- If I may summarise for a moment, in your work it is important not only to be able to frame a picture, but also to repay the click of the button with a smile. One has to know how to talk to people and deal with tempers, to explain, like in the famous tv cartoon, that knowing how to count doesn’t bring bad luck.  Maybe at first people aren’t happy. Unhappy about the fact that I have intruded into their lives.  But when they realise that my attitude isn’t one of intrusion, they change also, and sometimes ask questions.  And ask me to send them the photo.

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- Not always, of course, but occasionally. Last summer I wound up quite by accident in Istambul.  On my own.  This is a complex city, full of surprises of all sorts.  Needless to say I decided to walk through the streets with my camera.  As I was walking I heard a noise from above.  I look up and saw two children waving at me and signaling to ask me to take their picture.  I did.  They asked me to wait and disappeared into the room, and then

I heard shouting followed by crying.  When this had died down the small girl appeared at the window, her face streaked with tears, and she dropped down a piece of paper.  When I opened it I saw squiggles and realised that she had wanted to write her address but didn’t know how…

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- So where are you planning to send the photograph?  You witnessed a drama unraveling and no doubt the little girl is still waiting.

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- You haven’t heard the end of the story.  After a short while the boy appeared at the window too.  He knew how to write.

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- So you will send him the photograph…I know from literature that there are certain people who can only enjoy love-making to the full when there is an element of risk involved.  Would it be fair to say that extreme situations form a part of your inspiration?  You clearly like frank situations, real emotions, joy, anger – these are human emotions, and it is true to say that rightful anger captured on a photo can provoke sympathy in the onlooker.  However by photographing an angry person you may well make them even angrier.

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- The images I see and want to photograph are always positive.  They delight me, even if they seem from an outsider’s point of view to convey bad emotions – there is always hope.  I don’t look for the ‘down side’ of what I see.  I have a photo of a soldier on guard.  I took it quite by chance.  The soldier had been punished and was confimed to a glass-walled box.  When he saw me with the camera, he tried to hide and turn away.  But I so liked this image, the expression in his eyes and his dire situation, that I couldn’t act otherwise.  I went ahead, knowing that I would regret it bitterly otherwise.  The soldier on the photo is beautiful, and his beauty is underpinned by the desperate situation in which he is and by his real emotions.

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- You like fleeting encounters with strangers.

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- Best of all without words – through looks, smiles.

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- Yet you have to have your camera at the ready.

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- I wish I were able to take pictures with my eyes and develop them later, as an artist or a writer does.  Alas…

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- I do not dare to enter into relationships with strangers.

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- You should try – often a person will catch sight of the camera and realise what’s going on but continue to go about their business as though nothing’s happening.  Photographing children is especially rewarding.  Children get used to the camera very quickly and being photographed becomes a game.  They are very natural, since they don’t worry about how they look.

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- And what if, by chance, you take a photograph of a mafiosi?  Doesn’t that bother you?

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- I’d find that entertaining.

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- You know what you’re doing, that it harms no-one, and…

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- That I am doing what I do for art’s sake.  And my confidence is a sort of courage which protects me from negative situations.

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- Your photos are chance encounters which you are always on the look-out for.  What do you like most about your pictures?

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- By nature I like to spend most of my time alone.  Whilst also enjoying chance encounters.  Not meeting new people at an exhibition opening.  People on the street.  You see them only for a moment.  And that moment is full of joy, and gentle sorrow, so emotionally charged that I want to imprint them in my memory through photograph.

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- Do you prefer it when people do not notice the camera? 

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- Sometimes I wish I were the invisible man, but here another factor comes into play.  One should always take a photograph openly, and with the best possible intentions.  And those best intentions depend entirely on one’s own state of being.

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- As in one’s own attitude.  You know for sure that you are not hurting anyone.  You see the harmony between man and nature, for of course you are surrounded not only by chaos, but by harmony also.  This speaks of the artist’s inner strength.

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- Inspiration.

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- Now I think I understand.  Why do you describe your photos as ‘landscapes’?

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- We tend to think of a ‘nature morte’ in terms of apples, bottles – and of a landscape as forest and river.  Landscape is a beautiful word and in my opinion a human being is a part of nature and as such a perfectly formed landscape in his or her own right.

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- In other words, an oak is a man is a pine tree.  No doubt you mean the harmony that can exist between the subject and the context when you see them.  Nothing is out of place: the person is good, his or her shadow is falling just right and the building crane is in the right place.  You discern art in commonplace situations, and that is why you are a photographer.

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- That’s right.  My photographs reflect my mood.  When out taking photographs I am happy, at one with myself and the world, and what is more the world will almost always treat a person who is in that frame of mind well.  As a rule people want to share in my emotions on such days.  This happy state of being is what I want to fix, and the only way I can do that is with a camera.

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- Do you mean that in a state of denial you would not look for landscapes?

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- I wouldn’t.

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- You photograph your own joy at being alive on earth, and therefore have truth on your side.  I hope that the serious onlooker will be able to apprehend and share this experience.

 

Interview Valery Katsuba, 2002