City of Shadows Alexey Titarenko

CITY OF SHADOWS ALEXEY TITARENKO

uring the sixties, my family had a small room of fifteen square meters in a communal apartment in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). There I lived with my parents, grandmother, and aunt, who was then a student. I often dis- turbed them, mostly at dawn, because I woke very early and didn’t know how to keep myself occupied. The morning wait was unbearably boring — each moment seemed as long as a lifetime. To put an end to this situation, the adults taught me how to read. Reading affected me profoundly, stimulating my imagination and sensibility, giving me the desire to dream and especially to dream while taking walks. Reading also Daltered my vision of the surrounding reality, endowing it with mystery and intrigue. It seemed to me that behind the buildings, trees, and certain objects in the street — street- lights, for example — something magical lingered. A burning desire to see the hidden aspect of things overtook me. At such moments, I experienced an excitement that I had never felt before: I sensed an invitation to discover an unknown substance, material or spiritual. These moments made me happy, so happy that upon returning home, to the humble reality of daily life, I could only think about one thing: how to capture these special moments so that I would have them near me at my disposal, and to render these instances into a permanent mode of life. Around the same time, someone gave me an old, prewar camera, Komsomolets (meaning “Young Communist”). It was simple, even rudimentary for medium-format film, but to me it seemed complicated, impenetrable, yet at the same time promising: What if this black box could Tuchkov Pereulok 12/12, St. Petersburg, 1996

14 15 capture the brief moments of reality that made me so happy? I found the idea brilliant, so I coaxed reality, where all arts were considered instruments my parents into signing me up for the children’s photography workshop at the Kirov Cultural of propaganda, and there was no space for the ex- Palace, just before my ninth birthday. pression of an authentically personal sentiment. Dostoyevsky was one of the writers whose novels sparked my desire to discover this hid- I was initially inspired by Bach, Mozart, Bee- den facet of things, to see them differently. After reading Poor Folk, Humiliated and Insulted, and thoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky: composers whose Crime and Punishment, I was most attracted to the types of buildings where his characters lived: musical language was more accessible. However, labyrinthine courtyards with multiple entrances — sometimes with walls so high and narrow that I also listened to Shostakovich. At first spontane- you seemed to be in a well, dilapidated stalls, and places where marginalized society was found, ously and then in relation to my personal history, I alcoholics, tramps. Leningrad, its historical city center and in particular Vasilyevsky Island, where sensed the profundity and importance of his mu- I lived, was filled with such people. I spent entire days exploring such places. sic: my parents and grandparents are survivors Unfortunately, haunting these places didn’t enable me to create original images. The pictures of both the Gulag (my father was born in a camp that came out of the magical box were even less interesting than my surroundings had seemed to as the “Son of Enemies of the People”) and of the me before I learned to read. I couldn’t produce prints that aroused in me the same unique emotion Nazi blockade of Leningrad. I was told in the Phil- I felt in the streets, and I attributed this failure to a technical imperfection, or my lack of photo- harmonia that Shostakovich had lived in fear since graphic knowledge and education. the publication of an essay in Pravda called “Muddle Disappointed, I continued nonetheless to walk the streets and to read, and it did lead me to a Instead of Music,” written in 1936 after the pre- discovery: François Arago’s famous speech announcing the invention of the daguerreotype and miere of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The Louis Daguerre’s View of Boulevard du Temple (1838), taken with a very long exposure. The people essay denounced him as a “formalist,” which in the

had disappeared from Daguerre’s image except for the silhouette of a man who lifts up his foot, political climate of the time designated him as an Courtyard, Leningrad, 1975 probably to have his shoe polished. I didn’t try to imitate this photo. But I sought out more illus- Enemy of the People. Every day he expected to be trated books and catalogues of French nineteenth-century photographs, especially street scenes, arrested. At the outbreak of the war, Shostakovich participated in the city’s defense before its and I worked to improve my French. evacuation, and in the words of the official press, he “commemorated the heroism of its inhabit- Dostoyevsky was also instrumental in fostering my desire to know classical music. In his short ants in his ‘Leningrad’ Symphony.” story “White Nights,” the heroine (whom of course I fell in love with, just as the hero did) went to Shostakovich’s works reflect two experiences shared by the entire Soviet population: the the opera to listen to Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and was enchanted. I tried the experience my- Stalinist Terror and the horrors of the war. Identical musical phrases convey the exact sensa- self, and then bought a record. Little by little, I became a regular of the record shop and started to tions that the composer experienced in 1937, when the Terror reached its peak, and in 1941, familiarize myself with a broad spectrum of classical music. Vinyl records were expensive, and so which are an expression of his sentiments toward both Communism and Fascism. In Symphony were concerts. Later, by chance, when I was a student at the university, I was hired as an assistant no. 7, the “Leningrad” Symphony, isn’t the part based on the repetition of the simple melo- to the administrator of the famous Grand Hall of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia. There was dy — often known as “the invasion theme” — as innocent at the start as it is cynical at the end? at least one concert almost every day, and because I worked in the evenings I was able to stay in Does it speak only of invasion to us? Isn’t the journey from simplicity and innocence to cynicism the hall and listen to many of them. The music sometimes created the same joy and excitement and crime a journey that was taken by both Stalin and Hitler, as well as by the dictators of our in me as did particular corners of the city. Further, music offered me an emotional dimension to own time? And more generally, doesn’t one hear the symbolic expression of evil? In this sense, everything that presented itself to my senses. It invited me to interpret things without ideological Shostakovich’s message is universal. This is what propelled me to return repeatedly to his works, color, in a more universal — a more humane and honest — way. It provided an escape from Soviet to “read” them, finally, deciphering their real sense until they became a part of myself.

16 17 To return to photography: with this underlying metaphor was clearly to be found in Dadaist photomontages. Rushing to my archive of Dosto- urge to capture happy moments, I created better yevskian photos, which I had previously found so worthless, I began to cut them with scissors photos — from the technical point of view — with a and create compositions that would succeed as a series of photomontages, eventually entitled new camera, a Soviet version of a Leica. But the re- “Leningrad from Another Side.” For the first time, these creations — rather rudimentary, to be sult, I still felt, was dull and disappointing. I began to honest — touched me, and not just me but also the bearded smokers of the photo-club. During suspect that this was caused, at least in part, by a the eighties, I continued to use the same process for a series of montages and photo collages, flaw in the composition of my brain. “Nomenklatura of Signs.” At the Kirov Cultural Palace, stubborn and persis- Not only did literature provide me with material and subjects, it also helped me discover a tent, I had begun to take classes in photojournalism, process to translate and transform an internal and purely subjective state into something more each day pushing a little further into the discipline durable and, above all, capable of being communicated to others. and “perfection” of images. There, in a nearby room, Was it possible to convey a vision by means of photography? Could photography become a a crowd of bearded men met every week, their bluish language that could articulate meaning? My response, thanks to this initial experience at the end cigarette smoke, filtered or unfiltered, invading the of the seventies, was a resounding Yes. Consequently, I decided not to abandon photography but corridors. Though a non-smoker, I was accepted a to devote my life to it by enrolling in the Faculty of Film and Photography at the local university to year later as a full-fledged member of this “institu- pursue a master’s degree. tion,” a photo-club called “Zerkalo” (Mirror). Intense immersion in my studies, coupled with a job at the Philharmonia and the encounter Collage, Leningrad from Another Side series, 1978 What mattered most to the members of Zerk- with the first love in my life, obliged me to put aside my artistic projects and concentrate on get- alo — an intelligentsia of musicians, engineers, doc- ting my diploma. This was followed by military service, obligatory for graduates (even though it tors, and painters — was not just photography in itself, but photography as a means to reproduce was shortened to eighteen months). One incident while I was in the military particularly affected or discover, for example, works of nonconformist and anti-Soviet painters in Leningrad, and of my viewpoint on life and Soviet society. I was arrested by “Special Department” officials (repre- contemporary Western art, which was not generally known. It was also a way to access forbid- sentatives of the KGB in the army), and charged with several offenses, one of which was having den and unobtainable literature, such as Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag “compared Communism to Fascism”— enough to send me to prison for many years. Archipelago, which could be read on microfilm. More important, one could, in Zerkalo, also read I had not grasped the mentality of my fellow conscripts: most were only eighteen years old the reality of life inside the USSR as it really, truly was, without propagandist cosmetics. Moreover, and came from the most diverse and remote places in the USSR. Steeped in propaganda and one could have open and frank discussions. prejudices instilled since childhood, they perceived anyone who thought differently as suspect, At that time, what seemed most pleasing to me in literature and poetry was their capacity to fit to be denounced. My mail was intercepted, my words scrupulously reported to the “organs” transform, by way of poetic comparisons or metaphors, a gloomy and uniform reality into some- (another euphemism for the KGB). I felt as if I were an actor in a staging of Solzhenitsyn’s The thing more appealing to the imagination and of its truest essence: to “embellish” reality with the Gulag Archipelago, with so many scenes exactly as in the original text. I already knew some hidden emotional and personal experiences of the writer, who can in turn bestow on the work an addi- truths about Soviet life, in the same way one knows that one will die someday and that “someday” tional aesthetic value. could be tomorrow, without my life being affected in any way. But now I really believed in these One day, toward the end of the seventies, my Zerkalo friends, knowing that I was fluent hidden truths. in French, asked me to translate Dawn Ades’ Photomontage, published in Paris by Éditions In 1984 the system was already starting to fall apart. The regiment’s chief officers were ab- du Chêne. This book, by a professor at the Royal Academy in London, had a striking effect on sent on a mission elsewhere, and since I had in principle fulfilled my eighteen months of compul- me. I suddenly understood how photography could translate an artistic vision. And the use of sory service, I obtained a demobilization order that was duly signed and stamped by an officer

18 19 on temporary duty, who was surprised to Petersburg that Germany sent human- learn that I had been detained in the garri- itarian aid to avoid famine and prema- son prison without an arrest warrant. I took ture deaths among the aged. Inhabitants the first bus at dawn and was back home of the city called this period the “second the next day. blockade.” When I returned to “normal” life, the idea One day in the winter of ‘91–‘92, I was of articulating my vision of Soviet Russia hanging around on a street in the cen- began to seem more and more valid to me. ter of town, a place that had once been I formulated the project like this: During cheerful and teeming with people. Now, the years of its existence, the Soviet regime on a late afternoon, it was barely lit and had succeeded in installing the dominant devoid of cars. In the eerie silence, inter- power of the Communist party’s nomen- rupted only by the banging of doors in klatura, as well as another nomenklatura in shops with empty display windows, I

its image, that of signs. This means that the could hardly recognize these people, Collage, Nomenclature of Signs series, 1987 people living in the Soviet Union and their seemingly lost men and women, soberly Photomontage, Nomenclature of Signs series, 1986 daily activities were replaced by hypocrit- dressed, their faces filled with fatigue ical visual signs: posters, mural paintings, and despair, breathlessly carrying out the daily search for some basic food to make a meal. They banners, and slogans of colossal dimensions. The representation of the reality of Soviet life was, were like shadows — shadows that had not been seen in Saint Petersburg since the war and the in fact, considered a crime, which could lead to imprisonment, forced deportation to labor camps, blockade. The scene impressed me strongly, and I felt the need to communicate this distress and or, in some cases, even the death sentence. suffering to others — to express it through my photographs, and to let myself be carried away by The seed of the project, “Nomenklatura of Signs,” was soon born in the form of images from a leap of humanity towards these inhabitants of the city of my birth. Such ill-treatment of human superimpositions of several negatives or collages that mixed photographs, red tissue, excerpts beings, victims of an extraordinary injustice throughout the twentieth century — this metaphorical from Brezhnev’s discourses, and so forth. These images constituted my visual landscape at that representation of “men-shadows”— the pillar of my new vision — must first be conveyed through point in time, transcending all realistic references — a landscape in which individuals were reduced photography. Thus I chose a very long exposure time. to simple caricatures: the “True Worker,” or the “Happy Builders of Communism.” Above all, this I vividly remember the first image, taken at the entrance to the Vasileostrovskaya metro sta- series was conceived as a reflex against the stupidity and absurdity of the Soviet regime: a per- tion, located in an old neighborhood, surrounded by factories and shipyards. For the daily com- sonal reaction to the strange or even supernatural manifestations of the system. mute, the metro was the only public transport in service during this period of crisis. The train is In 1991, while Soviet totalitarianism was fading, I was still working on the “Nomenklatura,” but deep underground — more than two hundred feet — because the soil is so unstable, and access at a certain point I realized that I was debating with myself in a void, and that my work, while com- to the platforms is by way of a seemingly interminable escalator. When the escalator broke down, pletely sincere, risked appearing as opportunistic. By now, Soviet people had been transformed as often happened, entry to the station was restricted to avoid a dangerous crush. At rush hour into mere signs by an oppressive regime: their life was no more than a substitute for the real world. a crowd of several thousand people would accumulate outside, and, in waves, this human tide All these people conditioned by propagandist models of representation, a palpable ensemble of climbed up the stairs leading to the entrance of the impressive building on high ground — as was smiling faces, were becoming wandering shadows. The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of generally the case for most metro stations in Leningrad. Barricaded behind its glass doors, a few 1991 left most Soviet citizens with few means of survival. The situation became so drastic in Saint policemen were trying desperately to contain the masses of people. In vain, because the crowds

20 21 (Happy) Working Woman, Nomenclature of Signs series, 1987 (Happy) Worker, Nomenclature of Signs series, 1987

22 23 were determined to enter at all costs, even if it meant losing a button or a shoe. People pushed, yelled, threw punches. Handicapped people were trampled. It was like a scene from hell. As I watched, shocked and appalled, a musical air emerged in my head, a fragment of Shostakovich that brought me to tears. Not thinking consciously about what I would do, I set up a camera in front of the crowd. No one paid any attention. The exposure time exceeded several minutes and I pretended to wait, to read something in my notebook. Then someone jostled me and I closed the shutter. In the evening, looking at the negative, I experienced the same emotional shock I had felt when the Shostakovich melody came into my mind: deeply moved, almost in tears, but also filled with enthusiasm and excitement. Depicting the crowd as a general movement with erased secondary movements, the metaphor created by the long-exposure effect made evident certain fixed elements that would otherwise have been drowned in an abundance of details and faces. Yet these were exactly the elements — hands on the stairway rail, for example — that moved me, provoking in me an intense emotional pain I felt at the time as well as a wave of love toward the crowd. The mass of indistinct faces symbolized a precise moment that I had witnessed, but there was more to it. Similar episodes came to mind: wars and revolutions the Russians had suffered throughout their history. It was as if one photograph had embraced a decade, even a century. I felt that my childhood dream of capturing on film a state of the soul or a singular impression experienced in the street had come true — reality as I had felt and imagined it had been recreated. It was this notion of time — as if introduced in a slightly “mechanical” way while keeping the shutter open as long as possible — that transformed what would otherwise be just a simple “document” about a particular era into an actual visionary oeuvre. Resolved to continue this work, I happened to notice some images grouped in a certain way on a table, and the idea of a project dawned on me: a new series entitled “City of Shadows,” based on my impressions described above. What guided me in constructing this ensemble was once again a musical piece, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 2. As I watched the ghastly scene at the metro entrance, the opening melody from the first movement overwhelmed my hesitations and freed me from doubt, from self-interrogation, and from a childlike fear, if not to say a sense of shame. It allowed me to confront the furious, menacing crowd. This concerto soon became my best friend; I could listen to it all day, every day. As I walked in the city, I began to realize that Saint Petersburg again and again offered living illustrations for Crowd Entering Vasileostrovksaya Metro Station, St. Petersburg, 1992 this music. The monotonous opening melody was that of despair, but also of anticipation. The way the piece was composed — a reminiscence of dramatic episodes of the composer’s adolescence, followed by baroque passages and moments throughout with a certain drifting sensation

24 25 of happiness — was decisive in the con- the personalities and the visions of different ception of several images. For example: old artists could be translated through the in- women hastily selling food and cigarettes terpretation of the same musical work. How, to passers-by, trains, and people leaving for I asked myself at the time, could a famous their dachas, as well as peaceful views of the pianist such as Grigory Sokolov, or a legend- rain falling on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s ary conductor such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, main avenue. introduce through his own style a personal The years passed. Gradually, one grew message that sounded new and indepen- weary of this interminable descent into hell. dent of the composer’s? How could the mu- The situation continued to worsen. Added sician touch our senses so that we could take to the shortage of necessities was the col- a disinterested pleasure in discovering that lapse of the health-care system. Retirement message and consider it henceforth a form became nonexistent. People vanished, as if of beauty, even a new truth — and, in spite they had secretly emigrated, or died. Crime of this, to see it as a truth that came from Attic, Kid Looking through the Window, St. Petersburg, 1993 View of the Roofs, St. Petersburg, 1996 invaded the city and spread. By the middle of ourselves? the 1990s, Saint Petersburg was perceived Musicians could do this by creating dis- more as a capital of organized crime than as a cultural center; a television series, “Gangster tinct — sometimes sharply different — styles within a movement. To use an expression of Flaubert’s, Petersburg,” was broadcast on a national channel. Like others, I was depleted and disappointed. they passaient au rabot, changing the tempo specified by the composer and playing a part of the Hopes raised after the fall of the USSR had not been borne out. Slowly, however, the survival in- score with swiftness, energy, so that the sounds, the particular phrases, blurred off, with the gen- stinct compelled me to search for things that could bring some sort of moral respite, if only briefly. eral movement overwhelming the details. Then, slowing down, they sometimes played certain That’s how Dostoyevsky’s short story, “White Nights,” which was merely a vague memory, notes, even several bars, with an intense and meticulous attention: a “neatness” in which they caught my attention again, now by pure accident. But in this particular moment when I started (or the entire orchestra) engaged every bit of their virtuosity. This new relationship between the to read the first few pages, the story itself did not immediately come back to me; it was a certain parts that may, but doesn’t necessarily, correspond to the intention of the composer — isn’t this view from the kitchen window of our communal apartment, saturated with the smell of cabbages a creation in itself, an original idea that we owe to the performer? and dried apples. Years ago, as a Soviet schoolboy, I had read “White Nights” while contemplating I took pleasure in transposing the intervention of a musician into my shots, to reconstitute the the landscape of rusty roofs that extended without limit to the horizon. The attics, the mosaic of effects of musical “virtuosity” and “neatness” by applying with a fine-art brush some bleaching windows, were each illuminated by a particular light, sometimes revealing a glimpse of faces or solution on certain details: this application brightened them considerably and detached them shadows on the curtains. A soft, golden light enveloped my reverie. I was moved, and for the first from the rest of the image, which appeared as “blurred” or “drowned” into gray. Sometimes, I time in a long while, I felt calm after having lived these last years in a constant and heightened would just give a certain figure in the image a more pronounced density, juxtaposing it within the state of nervous tension. pale, soft background of the surrounding landscape. The result obtained was similar. I was also seeking calm in classical music, comparing it persistently to photography, so that In some way, the effect of a long exposure in photography is comparable to the methods of the former seemed to me richer and capable of articulating or expressing greater sentiments. musical interpretation: the latter directs the listener’s attention to elements that might have gone Thanks to having accumulated a vast record library since my adolescence (which included some unnoticed. In fact, it suggests precisely another meaning, which is more personal. All this gives of the Second World War live concert radio recordings), I had come to discern the way in which music, as well as the print, a poetic dimension that is the equivalent of metaphor.

26 27 I realized at the time that this delicious shiver, more commonly known as goose bumps, the state of being overwhelmed by a wave of emotion, has to do with the great performer’s ability to lull the audience into a state in which what comes next is emotionally unexpected. Drowsy and appeased, the listener is surprised to hear a chord introducing an abrupt change of mood, expe- riencing a sensation of nouveauté, of beauty. Or the audience, exhausted, irritated by a chain of sounds that are expressively “vulgar” or “badly performed,” may feel a profound emotion arising when a passage of tender and baroque simplicity suddenly arises, a melody that in a different situation would pass for something banal. The lesson I learned was that beauty is relative. To be accurate, only a part of the beauty re- sides in the object itself (for example, the execution of a melody), and the other part depends on the receptive listener, on his or her state of soul, memories, sensibilities. Like a musician with his or her score, I must interpret each negative, considering it as a founda- tion on which to build, associating the work each time to a creation that is somewhat different, a new message that is unexpected by the public, avoiding weariness and preserving fresh perception so that each new print provokes at the very least a surprise, if not a shock. The challenge of keeping perception open and fresh stimulated my desire to play with the nuances of the states of the soul, and in broader terms, to consider the print itself as a musical piece. Why, for example, must an image always contain black and white — as was instilled in us through textbooks and classroom photography lessons? What about a piano piece that is played on only one part of the keyboard? The same melody could be played one octave lower or higher, thus creating a very different impression. I could play a new octave on a print by making it on paper that had previously been slightly exposed to light, and not just on blank paper, obtaining a veil that was more or less gray. Minor or major key? This was conceivable by just leaving the gray image as it was, or by working delicately on some areas in the image (with the technique of partial toning) that would imitate a warm and gentle golden light, precisely the one that enveloped me when I was reading “White Nights.” This peaceful sweetness, entwined with childhood and adolescent memories, was recalled to me by Dostoyevsky’s short story. It aroused in me the desire to rediscover those districts of the

Three Pensioners Selling Contraband Cigarettes, St. Petersburg, 1992 city I had not visited for years, since my first attempt, in the late 1970s, to create an original work of art with a pair of scissors. I had to capture that magical moment of peace within myself while hopes of a better life were slowly moving away. It was a vital experience and I was, from then on, better prepared. “White Nights” had indeed inspired me. One of Dostoyevsky’s ideas to which I adhere completely is the personification of houses. Each house has its own character. Clearly, they do not move about. Although they are stationary in

28 29 “There are, Nastenka, though you may not know it, strange nooks in Petersburg. It seems as though the same sun as shines for all Petersburg people does not peep into those spots, but some other different new one, bespoken expressly for those nooks, and it throws a different light on everything. In these corners, dear Nastenka, quite a different life is lived, quite unlike the life that is surging round us, but such as perhaps exists in some unknown realm, not among us in our serious, over-serious, time. Well, that life is a mixture of something purely fantastic, fervently ideal, with something (alas! Nastenka) dingily prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar.”

—FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, WHITE NIGHTS, 1848 TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE GARNETT

Woman on the Corner, St. Petersburg, 1995

30 31 relation to the camera, the camera can shift as I please when taking a picture of them during a long exposure. It is the same with light, the sun playing an essential role in the narrator’s monologue in the middle of Dostoyevsky’s story: by displacing the camera, I could render it alive and magical, too. It was as if the sun had been waiting just for this. Already, on the very first negative, the sun’s rays started to smile at me by singing in C major! The technique I invented had also allowed me to recreate the ambience of the city at different moments of the day or night — or rather the white nights — and to reunite them Sunset on Canal, St. Petersburg, 2006 in a series of images in soft and pale colors, reminiscent of certain paintings by Whistler (who claimed Russia as his place of birth, even though he was born in Massachusetts). This particular series would be entitled “Black and White Magic of Saint Petersburg.” A year later, in 1996, although nothing had truly changed in the country, I had the privilege of seeing this series hung on the walls of the City Exhibition Hall. The present and the future began to show themselves to me in a more favorable light. Revitalized, my spirits searched for optimistic notes in the current reality. My technical work improved greatly, and the sun, whose presence was more or less underlined by a palette nuanced by warm shades, dominated several later prints. In August 1998, a terrible crisis shook the country once more. The national currency, the ruble, became mere paper in just a few days. The collapse of the economy buried the aspirations of Russian citizens, their savings lost because of failed banks. The population poured out into the street. Some begged, some turned to prostitution, others hastily set up shop with all they could sell or trade: gold, milk powder, watches, onion bulbs, jewelry, cigarettes, porcelain, matches, bronze sculptures, worn shoes, potatoes, old books. This ongoing chaos transformed the entire city into an immense black market. Two very different photographs, one of which reveals the op- posite of the other, symbolized this period: “A View of the Sennaya Square,” created a few days after the beginning of the crisis, and “A Begging Woman,” taken a year later. Photographed from the roof of a house, the first shows Sennaya Square (Hay Market Square), Hay Market Square from the Rooftop, St. Petersburg, 1998 which is emblematic of Saint Petersburg. In his early works, Dostoyevsky used this neighborhood

32 33 as the home of many of his characters. Returning after years of imprisonment and exile, he set- tled near the square, and there, in an apartment on Malaya Meshanskaya Street (now known as Kaznatcheyskaya Street), he dictated Crime and Punishment to the woman who later became his wife. Raskolnikov’s murder of the old pawnbroker takes place not far from the square. After Dostoyevsky’s death, and especially during the Soviet era, Hay Market was transformed. The Russian Orthodox Church that dominated the square’s southeast corner was demolished and later replaced by metro and bus stations. More crucially, the square ceased to be what it had always been: a marketplace. Within a year of the USSR’s disintegration, poverty, famine, and the explosion of crime had brought more changes than the preceding forty years. Beggars, prosti- tutes, vendors of smuggled goods, and small stalls filled the square’s immense space, turning the historic place back into what it had once been: a site of ill repute, a large market of dark dealings, a zone of illegal exchanges in broad daylight. Toward the end of 1998, this neighborhood saw some revitalization. Small stalls were replaced by more civilized kiosks. In summer, when most of the city’s population escapes to the country, the square becomes almost empty. This is especially true in mid-August, when fruits and veg- etables begin to emerge in people’s gardens. However, on the day when “A View of the Sennaya Square” was taken, everything was very different. Ordinary Russians were abandoning their dachas and gardens and returning to the city to buy whatever was available before it was too late, with money that was losing its value by the minute. This is the moment that corresponds to the photograph. There remains, however, a small detail in the center of the image: a couple — perhaps two young lovers — immobile in what seems like a kiss. This detail marks a huge departure from the past. The couple contributes a more romantic atmosphere to this image — an atmosphere less desperate than in the preceding “City of Shadows” series. The other photo, “A Begging Woman,” was taken a year later in the same place, but from another angle, at the level of the muddy pavement. In the twilight of a damp, foggy evening at the end of autumn, I was passing by the market. An old woman was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk covered by viscous brown mud. People walked past her without paying any attention. Around her, all was gray and gloomy. What attracted me to her was a piece of paper she was holding in her hand. The paper was very clear, almost shining, catching the last rays of light. It seemed to be the mirror of her soul, a cry of distress. It bore this message: “For the love of God, please, help me.” One of the main ideas that I wanted to highlight in this particular print was the old woman’s solitude. Begging Woman, Hay Market Square, St. Petersburg, 1999 To capture that, I had to create an ambience of confinement around her — a kind of dense smog, clouding the image at its edges. Naturally, for this poor elderly pensioner reduced to life on the streets, forced to beg from passers-by, a sentiment of compassion would overwhelm the beholder.

34 35 If there is compassion, there must also be love and understanding. And perhaps it is with these qualities that a person can reunite himself with one of the roles of an artist and one of the functions of art. But I must return to the desperate attempt of my younger days to carry away and preserve moments that procure for me happiness — moments of moral and physical euphoria I know from my walks after reading. I allow these experiences to settle within me, and have exteriorized them and made them accessible through photographic images — images that have been exhibited in galleries and published in books. An idea comes to my spirit abruptly: is the city itself the genuine subject? Most often it barely appears. The main focus is not its iconic sites. Instead, can we not see emotions weaving and shaping the perception of the world in a profound way? My emotions? Yes, and also through me the emotions of those who have lived in this country and endured so many horrors, catastrophes, sufferings, these millions of anonymous people it was always considered proper to represent only from without. Universal emotions perpetuated during the last century, like those that stir in us at the music of Shostakovich or the words of Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, are the emotions that constitute the main themes of my photographs, to the extent of transforming the most documentary among them into elements of a novel — not reportage, but a novel, whose central theme is the human soul, its modulations inspired by gazing upon human events, with their vibrations in a major or minor key.

Alexey Titarenko November 2012 Translated from the French by Fiona Sze-Lorrain The translator wishes to acknowledge Sally Molini and Maryanne Hannan for their generous editorial contributions.

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