Photographer Pavel Krivtsov

Those who know Pasha Krivtsov “not very much” will never agree with my comparing him to an iceberg. To compare the mild, helpful, easygoing and homely Pavel Pavlovich with a cold, icy mountain? I can’t believe it came to mind! It’s here, though. And only for one reason: only a fraction of this man is visible outside. The rest is somewhere out there, in unknown depths. You can try to “dive” to the bottom line. I don’t have the breath yet. Although, I admit, there are those whose “diving” was successful. But I think there are very few people like that.

Photographer Pavel Krivtsov

What’s all this?? I don’t think anyone would call Krivtsov secretive. No, more like a shirt guy. Not the kind of person who never stops working with his tongue, but the kind of person who will always understand you, sympathize with you. He’ll be attentive and understanding, comforting, but not reassuring words – “words of encouragement”. In some other, wordless way. Twenty years ago I should have been “bent.”. For sure I didn’t know about this decision of the heavens, but I felt it on my skin: it strongly smells burning. Paul appeared. Whether he said something special to me, I don’t remember. But there’s something in me that’s softened, and my fears are a little less. This is probably how a good confessor works on the soul of a lost person. Takes some of the pain off his soul. And where does he put all this pain?? Overloads in my soul? Is that really how it was told in the very human American movie “The Green Mile”?? There the innocently condemned to death big and kind “sucked” the sickness and pain out of the insane man or the trampled mouse. Those healed, he did?..

Memories of the war. 1966

I once saw a “reportage” by Pavel Krivtsov from a madhouse. Sick people suffered. It was as if they were trying to find themselves. It wasn’t even the pain, but the bewilderment: what was happening to me?? How it happened? Where am I?? Not in the physical space – “where,” but in that excited and disheveled spiritual world in which they had lost their bearings. I said “suffered.”? No. Bewildered! That’s more accurate. And they weren’t mental patients, but people confused: a man stunned, dumbfounded. Most of the photos seem to say: this is what a person can get to. Some person, not you… It certainly won’t happen to you. And it was as if Paul was saying, “Don’t take a chance, we all walk under God. Show me, if you can, understanding and compassion … Maybe, when need be, you too will be able to understand.

No, Krivtsov didn’t say those words. But when, shocked by the impression the pictures made on me, I said: “So much kindness… How come..?..”, Paul only looked up and said: “Why else would you take it off??..” Maybe it wasn’t this shot, but some of Paul’s other pictures that made me realize that what he depicted in the picture was only the beginning, the very tip of the iceberg. And layers of meaning are somewhere in the depths. Maybe, at the very bottom of our souls..

Now another example. In April 1986 it exploded. Chernobyl. What is this? A confluence of circumstances? Incorrect calculation of reactor design, which by no means should have led to the explosion the “foolproof protection” should have been triggered ? Or maybe it is the obscure phrase “the human factor”, i.e. the presence of the very fool, the incompetent, who must not be allowed close to the levers or buttons of control? The threat of nuclear death has frightened the world. Radiation Unseen. Where it will crawl, who it will hit… Who’s to blame???

Of course, the culprit was found: it is director of Chernobyl nuclear power plant Bryukhanov. How many curses, spoken and mute, are flying at this man. And with good reason: he is already imprisoned. Krivtsov goes to take a picture of this man in the camera. Crucify him, crucify him!.. And the photographer sees in front of him, as in the aforementioned patients, not anger, not fear, not remorse, but the same bewilderment: how come, I followed the instructions, followed every turn of the wheel, and now flew into a terrible abyss… “Did you pay attention to his left pupil? See what flashes in my eye? This is the sign of Chernobyl, the reflection of the catastrophe…”

Composer Georgy Sviridov. 1990-1995

Spring on Kizhi Island. 1980-e.

Well, creators are probably prone to mysticism. I am not a creator. I did not see any mystic signs: simple refraction of side light through the lens. Or maybe I didn’t want to see? Or couldn’t? But I saw a wounded and troubled soul of a man… I couldn’t shoot like that. Why? Because I would have gone to the unfortunate prisoner with my verdict ready and all ready to go. And Krivtsov himself tried to understand through this man: how could it be??

Another picture – the site of Pushkin’s duel on the Black River. Dull St. Petersburg day, grey granite pyramids, dull and featureless, dirty, lumpy snow. I don’t understand anything, and Paul looks at me expectantly. Waiting for some kind of reaction. I’m him. “I didn’t notice anything?”And a little tells you where to look. And then it hits me. Dirty snow in a tiny place turns into Pushkin’s face. Yes, yes, that’s Pushkin, or rather his death mask. A shuddering centipede runs down my back. So the mysticism exists after all? So ghosts are not imaginary, not the fruit of a clever and sick mind..? No, it’s simpler than that: “It was me who put the mask in the snow,” Paul lifted the veil.

I couldn’t have seen it that way either. Well, guessing to bring a mask to the place of death is not a trick yet. My picture would have been taken with a mask, the rest would have been in the background. Specific, logically connected to the mask, but still a background. And Pasha put a special meaning into the picture, and the depth of it, for me at least, became frightening.

Pasha didn’t have much of a family: him, his mother, and his grandmother. And he never saw his father in his life. Pavel was born in Belgorod Region, which was then part of Kursk Region. 1943. The Kursk Bulge. Perhaps the greatest tank battle near Prokhorovka in the history of wars. “Prokhorovka is twenty kilometers from our village of Rozhdestvenka. But our village didn’t suffer”. Pavel’s father, Pavel Krivtsov senior, went off to the front, when the boy was already enrolled in the “register” of future births. In the fall of 1943, his grandmother received a notification: “Your son…” and so on. Why to his grandmother and not to his mother? The parents were unmarried.

Oleg Larionov, letter carrier in the village of Koinas, Arkhangelsk Oblast. 1988

Then, when the boy was growing up, his mother told me such an episode. Though the village was “unharmed”, it does not mean that it was spared by the war. Once my mother, who was about to have a baby, hid from the shelling in the cellar. Suddenly his door swings open, and in the doorway is a German with a prepared grenade. A wave of the hand, and that was it! But seeing only frightened women on the ground, he restrained himself… And if he did not stop his hand, ready to tear out the pin… Who can know whether such experiences go away without a trace or not?? But just as at that moment the mother and son were a single organism, this bond has not weakened further. A mother loved her only child, and he bathed in her kindness. People are wrong when they say that excessive love spoils children.

Pavel went to four classes in his village, and then had to run to the neighboring school: five kilometers there, five back. And every day. You may or may not want to, but the nature will become your interlocutor, and you may feel yourself a part of it? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it. But I am convinced that Pavel feels this unknown “nature” in his gut.

Well, where there’s nature, there’s fishing, there’s hunting. Pavel wanted to get a rifle. Slowly, he and his mother saved a hundred Dollars. To save up half of it, and there’s happiness! But dreams can be fickle. Exploration work was going on right in the village: everything there is based on iron ore. And there was one amateur photographer among geologists. Pasha and his buddy became frequent visitors to his tent. Pavel’s friend was also interested in photography. He often dove into the dark cellar, I don’t know what wonders he did there. But then “misty pictures” appeared in which, with a little effort, one could make out familiar faces, including oneself.

And Pavel forgets about the gun, forgets about the future hunt. My mother borrowed another 50 Dollars from a neighbor. With that kind of money, 150 Dollars, you could buy anything, even a rifle or the cheapest of cameras, a Smena. They cost about the same. Pasha went to Belgorod and bought himself this photo miracle. I still had enough money for film and some developer and fixer. The manual’s been read, the film’s loaded. Shot by. Now Pavel is diving into the cellar with his friend.

No developing tank, and the temperature in the cellar is at human tolerance level, but clearly insufficient for the required temperature solutions. But the world is not without miracles – everything worked out! How can any of the future photographic awards compare with the sweetness of the first fortune that opened the door to a new, magical world!

It all happened when Pavel was in the seventh grade. And at the end of his seven years on the road. Krivtsov goes to Belgorod, where his uncle worked on the railroad.

At the boarding school where Pavel lives, there was a small photographic circle. He was taken by a freelance photo correspondent of Belgorod regional newspaper. He used to select works by kids he thought were interesting. Those photos sometimes appeared in the pages of the newspaper. Pavel’s photos often appeared in the pages of the magazine.

The miners from Bryanka. 1987.

The 1960s were upon us. A fresh wind a hackneyed image, but where to go was blowing in and out of the windows, in the editorial office, and throughout life. I wanted to, and I could. Pasha’s manhood was going fast. I use another well-worn metaphor: Pavel soaks up everything that seems curious and new to him like a sponge. “Okay, only in photography, well, literature, let’s say…

When Pavel lived in Rozhdestvenka, his friend, the very man who got him hooked on photography, had a brother who was a painter. He also later moved to Belgorod. Pavel never lost touch with him, and there he got to know his fellow artists. The young guys, as befits a young man, were on fire with passion: they beat up some fellow workers and grinded some others to powder. They searched for truth. Or maybe they’ve been treading their own paths, “their own style”, as Pavel thinks. They must have been arguing about literature and films.

Someone had a record player. Music was listened to. Paul, too – Mozart, Chopin, Bach… Well, who else do you know of the old and greats… Not just listened, but absorbed. You can tell me what you can’t say for the sake of small talk? Then look at the portrait of the great American composer Georgy Sviridov. What he hears at that moment, what he experiences? In what resonance with the composer had to fall into the author of the picture?

After working for sixteen years in the Belgorod youth newspaper, Pavel was noticed in the capital. It’s taken by “Soviet America.”. I’m omitting the details of how it happened, it’s not that important. But the important thing is that the newspaper began to change drastically, particularly in terms of photo design. And it’s hard to say what came first: the chicken or the egg. Has Pavel’s vivid personality rolled the first pebble off the mountain, or has the newspaper shaken things up so that everything has moved.

If to speak about Pavel’s originality, I would designate it briefly as penetration into the soul, whether of people, a landscape or even objects. Yes, yes, don’t tie your “soul” to just about anything. Well, what a “soul” glass has? And by a wood or a snag? Well, that’s as good as it gets – beauty. But nature knows no “beauty.”. She’s too rational to stoop to such “nonsense.”. Man gives soul and beauty to the world. And only…

Solovki – the Calvary of America. 1992

Or maybe he bestows his soul, his soul particles, on God’s creatures and even human beings? A little doggie in a snow-covered telephone kiosk is one of Pavel’s first photos, one of his “iconic” shots. As Amosov, the surgeon, who “cut up” tens of thousands of people, raved about it, it’s hard to accuse him of being sentimental. A dog is a wire, used by one soul to transmit its pain to the other. Of course, this pain is not global. And why not the world??

Maybe it’s the butterfly effect. Here a butterfly flapped its wings, and on the other side of the earth it turned into a storm. We’ve crushed the worm, and the earth’s ecological balance has collapsed. Don’t take it literally. And nothing will come of the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, and nothing will come of the death of one worm, either. But our deafness to a blade of grass, a small creature, a child’s fate, any person we meet is an axe hanging over us all.

Scary? No, it’s not. Get used to . Yes, and are these people, flickering everywhere, worth not only pity, but simply sympathy? Standing! One by one, Krivtsov’s photos convince: man is not only evil. Look at him, there is so much light in him, in the man. And at the same time he is so mournful and lonely.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just imagining it all. It’s simple, ordinary: people as people. And who is interested in them??

Paul’s interest in the person – each and every person, regardless of their position in society – says almost everything, one should only try to make sense of it. All the people in his photographs, if possible, are named: a mechanic, a teacher, a sister, a blind soldier, an archpriest, a shepherd-poet..

These names may not be known to anyone but the photographer. Well, now you know them. And believe me, as Paul says, their spiritual world is no shallower than that of the most famous and famous people. They say true equality can only be in a bathhouse: you can’t pin all your regalia on your bare chest. The photographer perceives each person as such, without ranks, titles, shining halos above their heads… And they, these celebrities, appear as washed of the glory clinging to them as obscure old widows..

I’ve photographed a lot of people washed in glory. Whether the pictures were better or worse, I couldn’t bring any of them down to earth from their pedestal. No matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I sneered at them, they still “floated”… They are not our kind of people. And Paul says, “No, they’re just like the rest of us…”. And they can be hurt and tormented and suffer and have moments of enlightenment. And you’re with them… like in a bathhouse. No regalia, no rank.

Writer Viktor Astafiev. 1984.

Is it hard to shoot like that?? I don’t know, it’s not my thing. I still do not know how through a narrow, almost invisible crack in the depths of human defense, in the armor, behind which almost everyone hides his inner, hidden, to penetrate into the human soul. And there, in the twilight, in the darkness, you can see something bright, unprotected, vulnerable… Looking at Pavel’s photographs is work. And above all the work of the soul, if there is one. And everything starts with an interest in a person. Not to the end result, which is the picture, but to the person, whether he’s the hero of your picture or not.

…Is there really something in all of us that could be of interest to at least one person?? Yes! If this is of interest for him who tried to see a human in us. Of course, the viewer doesn’t have to see everything the author imagined. But there are breakthroughs when the viewer’s heart starts beating to the same rhythm as the artist’s. Sync!

I would call an early snapshot by Krivtsov, “Remembrance of War” from 1966, one of those pictures. The barrel of a gun that’s shot its day, the pipe that hangs from it, that’s blown its day… A man standing with his back to him, the wind whipped the remnants of his thinning hair above his head. In a bloody crown of roses… And this one, it seems, has done his share as well. Clouds, clouds … Heavy, exaggeratedly heavy, which is so rare in Krivtsov’s. What’s that about?? Or: what is this? An ancient Greek tragedy, a drama? Who cares?! And the picture is stuck in you like a minted one. Think or not think, but he lightly taps the tam-tams of your soul.

“I don’t even know why people are often frank with me, open their souls…” Maybe they see the integrity of his nature and decency? Maybe they feel that he does not lie in his feelings and do not cheat? Why did they suddenly decide to entrust him with their innermost thoughts?? Is he a clergyman?? Yes, Krivtsov is a deeply and sincerely religious man. Is that enough?? Well, let us say he is kind… And who says that excessive kindness does less harm than evil?? With good intentions… No, you can’t get away with just one formula. What are you, invisible, glass? You are here and you are not here? Why is it that people “don’t notice” your presence in some minutes??

Black River. The site of Pushkin’s duel. 1987

Here’s the writer Bondarev on the bench. Well, he’s somewhere out there, far away. Okay. But here is the philosopher Losev. Denis is a man of God. Bishop Konstantin of Brest and Kobrin. Writer Astafyev. The adolescents I can’t even say the usual – kids Peter and Paul… Okay, I agree although I doubt it : everyone could have one of these shots. But to be like this, one by one, in one spirit?! Once – by chance, two – by coincidence, three – by habit… And if not once, not ten times, but hundreds of times? What do you want to understand??

Krivtsov collects a collection of photos of people dear to him and publishes the album “The American Man. Century of the XX”. You flip through the pages and you think: no, America hasn’t gone anywhere, and people are no worse than in olden times… Here’s a country letter carrier from a remote village in Arkhangelsk. What is not a provincial intellectual?? A perfect Chekhovian type, even with glasses. Maybe it’s not a letter carrier, but a doctor just take off his cap – Dr. Smoov?

And Kizhi? Was it centuries ago, when this miracle, the Church of the Transfiguration, was being erected for tourists? No, to please the soul. And someone, going to the field in the morning, saw her every day from his window. And then she loomed somewhere on the horizon, when they were harvesting turnips or flax. Now they’re growing potatoes. That’s the difference. It turns out that time doesn’t change that much. Pavel, like a master restorer, brushes off the varnish, blackened by time, and beneath it, the paints of the present day… Maybe this comparison is not accidental – paint and varnish… Something from the artist’s, painter’s way of life. And Pavel has a lot of friends among artists. And on a warehouse of the soul – thin and nervous, timid and vulnerable, responsible for its every movement, impulse.

Hoping for help. 1967

House of Mourning the Gorky Mental Hospital of Kursk . Kaschenko . 1990 g.

Ringers. 1989

Teacher Dmitry Nikolaevich Pronin. Oboyan town, Kursk region. 1983

Natalia Krivtsova, mother.

From the “Prokhorovka Field” series. 1973