Photographer Vsevolod Tarasevich: Crazy Life from Shaping Intellect to The End of the Earth

I myself am now at an age that far surpasses the age of Vsevolod Sergeyevich Tarasevich, when he was bursting with ideas, opening and closing “new ways”. But looking back, I want to say: if we and I mean also Koposov had not been fueled by Tarasevich’s crazy energy, we would have surely lost a lot in our understanding and consequently in our attitude towards photography. And more broadly, in understanding the entire nature of creativity. True creativity is burning, bordering almost on madness. It is not without reason that they say that true genius is as abnormal as the ailment I mentioned..

Essay “Vsevolod Tarasevich” from the book by L. Sherstennikov’s “They stayed behind the scenes” is published in abridged form.

Vsevolod Tarasevich: “Success as a photo reporter is a happy accident multiplied by skill”.

Being engaged in photography, Vsevolod Sergeyevich Tarasevich changed his views on it more than once. From the most severe “staging”, when the shot was forged through the “sweat and moaning” of both sides, when the photographer had to ply the “model” with water for five hours in a row, to the equally frenzied “hunting” for the subject, a passionate hunt, longer than a staging, but which would not let the reporter be sure until the very last moment that the shot he had in fact just was caught. Over the years, one thing has probably remained constant in a photographer: the certainty that there are no insurmountable problems or unattainable goals.

1. From the theme “The End of the Earth”. 1965

Tarasiewicz spares no expense. Twenty or thirty kilometers away, in the merciless cold, in a gas car which was blown through from all sides and which was not easy to get at the wrong time, he drove to the gas pipeline route to watch the sunset…

Angry, cold and tired, he returns almost by midnight to tell his companion, blissfully laying on clean sheets, that “there was no sunset. Or the sunset was, but there was no “situation”. Tarasiewicz spares no time. He does not meet the deadline for his assignment, but still, when he returns, he announces that he must go on a follow-up film. He doesn’t spare the tape. Hundreds of meters for a business trip, while another would only take dozens. Not sparing the apparatus. In answer to a question from the management about cameras and lenses: “You use them to shoot nuts?”After he lays out a pile of equipment for repair, he says irritably: “You can’t seriously think that I’m deliberately damaging my equipment? If cameras can’t take the load, we should at least think for once about what befalls the one who takes the picture?”.

It really isn’t easy for anyone who shoots with this lens. Not only because when a business trip is finally over, it’s the most tedious and stressful time for the reporter: to carefully go over the mass of material, not to miss it God forbid!! of a single frame, which may turn out to be just the right one.

2. The Twelfth Symphony. 1962

3. From “The End of the Earth”. 1965

In his early years, as a twenty-two-year-old boy, he worked on the Leningrad front as a photojournalist for the TASS. Flying in a trio of fighters. Almost every sortie, the trio was missing one or even two planes. Tarasevich was coming back. When, finally, after a few days, exhausted, he returned to the editorial office, he rushed to quickly process the material. Turn it in right away! Several development tanks, twice as many films. To speed things up, reporters stacked the films with their non-emulsion sides, their backs facing each other. Two films are developed in one run this way. That’s the way it’s always been done, when in a hurry. So did he. And not for the first time. Tired he collapsed on the sofa, it was time to change solutions. Finally, I took it out… One could not have expected a bigger shock: all the film pairs were sticking together! Maybe he mixed up the sides of the film when loading it… It was lying in the heat for days.

A reporter knows what it’s like to lose a shot. Even the one that was not on the film, but was seen and not caught by the lens. You already have a ready print in your head, but it is not there and never will be. But to ruin a job which had been done and suffered, and, moreover, for which one risked one’s life..

One might say that Tarasevich was constantly searching for himself. As a Tassov and then as a reporter for Vecherka, he did everything that was required of a reporter-informant, a reporter-newspaper. First, everything that is done must be done in time, second, in order to have time to saturate the paper, and third, not to break out of the circle of demands made on you very much.

4. Overcoming.

Academic N. A. Kozyrev. 1966

5. Duel.

From an essay on MSU. 1963

It is fairly said that he who has not passed the newspaper school is not a worker. Tarasevich went through that school. It’s hard to say how much it affected his impulsive character, but apparently there were certain pros. There were cons. Constant hurry, impossibility to concentrate – work from the wheel, “in number”. Sometimes 5-7 shoots a day. And the specifics of the newspaper’s requirements, from the subject matter of the pictures right down to the size of the plates and the printing capacity, all of this limited the possibilities for the reporter, who had already developed a taste for photography and had reached the ceiling within the framework of a city newspaper.

– Taking a close look at photos in the magazine. I feel I can do it, so can I. The picture is clear to me..

“The picture is clear” – you feel what it is made of, you see its structure, and the technology of the work put into it is clear.

– And then I made up my mind..

The magazine approved of the young reporter’s work and offered me a trip to Altai. First assignment from a reputable body. Almost to the edge of the world. Interviewed anyone and everyone who knows anything about this region, who knows about the villages there, about this kind of filming. Twentieth time the equipment was rinsed, cleaned and blown out, the film was tried in all modes. Several poods of cargo – cameras, tripods, film, electric lamps and soffits – there should be no overlap… And the first blow – a village without electricity. Bulbs, lanterns, piles of junk he had brought from thousands of kilometers away. In such cases it is little consolation to think that surprises are inevitable..

Tarasevich changes from a newspaper chronicler into a magazine photographer. At that time it meant, first of all, being a free owner of all the arsenal of lighting and shooting equipment and being able to make first class negatives under any conditions, and also having a play of imagination and being able, at least sketchily, to sketch your future frame. Often, while still in the newsroom, in New York, the whole essay was already drawn. Drawing – literally. Plots were invented, shots were sketched, and very often the artist arranged the images in magazine articles. The reporter had to be able to cope with such a specific assignment.

Tarasevich knew how to do it. I would probably not be wrong in saying that his classically composed works, On a Collective Farm Construction Site and Cement Factory, were exactly of this kind. Extremely staid, deaf and laconic, nailed on four nails. No scattered details, “all guns blazing,” the goal is compositional optimum! The reader may detect a certain irony in these words. Well, times have changed, tastes have changed. But seriously, these works are excellent examples of photography, the kind of balanced, graphic, painterly compositions that at times were considered the only true.

6. First lesson. 1962

7. From “Norilsk” theme. 60s

At the end of the 1950s tangible changes began to take place in photography. It was becoming more relaxed in form. Photographs with a looser, “uncoordinated” structure begin to break into the line of “painterly” compositions. But its inner self doesn’t remain the same, either. The authors set a goal not only to show the fact, but also to interpret it. The photograph reveals the background. This requires the viewer to pay closer attention, to reflect, to participate with the author in comprehending the work.

And so Tarasevich takes the “Tracks in the Desert” shot. Still firmly lumped together, it already bears the signs of a new composition: an open one. By its construction the viewer understands that the whole picture is not in front of him, but a fragment of it. However, the fragment in which the main thing, the idea of the work, is focused.

The picture seemed to have two independent centers: the resting group and the caterpillar tracks. “The Mysterious Picture”: that’s what they called it at first. There’s a mother tree in a field: camels, and in Kiev an uncle makes footprints. But since the picture nevertheless existed, and the author, not wanting to put it on paper, was still carrying it around, we decided to look at it with different eyes. What if the proximity of these two centers was deliberate rather than accidental?? Isn’t this the author’s idea, and if so, what’s behind it?? Vsevolod Sergeyevich himself told us about the fact that the picture was not accidental, but the result of an illumination:

– Not a word to anyone! Shh-shh-shh!.. This print is made with two negatives, one narrow and one wide, one black and white and one color. And the initial shots were taken in different lighting conditions: the group in diffuse, overcast lighting, the tracks in the sun..

Now that so much time has passed, I won’t feel guilty about revealing a horrible secret. The edited photograph, however, has gained a slenderness. “Footprints in the Desert” has a different, philosophical meaning: man and nature. Combat? Maybe… At that time there was still a slogan: “Let’s conquer nature”, and Tarasevich became one of the photographers of the time!”. But people did not realize that they themselves were a part of nature. Well, let’s not get into moralizing. The main thing is that Tarasevich, showing neither an abundance of equipment, nor a gigantic front of work, convinced: something is changing in the relationship between man and nature. The desert is NOT THAT way anymore. We can’t tell how “wrong” it is, but that it is changing is clear.

8. From an essay about New York State University. 1962

9. Footprints in the Wilderness. 1957

That same years saw the rise of photography in the direction of reportage. The stiffness of the compositions, the stiffness of the situations, the set and preordained nature of the solutions, had become too much of a nuisance. Photographers strive for snapshots of free style, “on the fly. A fairly large group of young amateur photographers who joined the ranks of professionals during this period also carried the idea of reportage on their banner. Photography began to rebuild, readers’ tastes began to change, editors’ tastes began to change, editors’ demands began to change, forcing their reporters to work in a new way. It was an agonizing process for many of the reporters who stood by their former views, a process that dragged on for years of semi-depression.

“Perestroika was slow. Speaking of myself, I must admit that at a certain period I found myself as a soldier without arms. I was no longer able to shoot like before and I was not yet able to shoot like I wanted to. This is the opinion of Tarasevich, a master who was touched by perestroika when he was already morally ready for it and who himself stood in the first ranks of those advocating a new approach to photography.

But no matter how difficult was perestroika, no matter how few guidelines there were to convince us of the existence of undoubted achievements in this field, the process moved on. And Tarasevich became one of its most restless heralds. He refuses to give up the idea of “staking the shot. He no longer draws diagrams of future photographs. He puts forward the “pheasant” theory. In a nutshell, the essence of this theory boils down to this. A photographer shooting a reportage is like a hunter, say, of pheasant. Going after a pheasant in a city square is a senseless idea. To shoot it, you have to know, at the very least, where pheasants are to be found. So it is with the photographer: he has to anticipate the situation. To know where it is most likely to occur. Well, and, of course, to know what situation you are interested in. That is, the photographer is not going senselessly to “chop” shots, but carries a certain program, a certain focus.

Tarasevich proves with his photographs: he knows where and how to hunt. From Kursk, he brings back “First Class” and “Common Mother”. Nothing of Tarasevich’s past remains in these works, not even in their composition or the task at hand. It is not easy to define the photographer’s task unequivocally. It focuses on the human subject – his behavior, his state, his relationship to his surroundings. When he shoots the teacher, he makes an analysis for himself, making associations. The teacher walks between the rows, stopping at the desks. But the reporter is attracted to only one desk – the one by the window. On the window is a pot with a delicate sprig, a flower sprout. The photographer draws for himself the analogy of a classroom, growing children. The window frame is drawn as a cross. This is the cross that the teacher has voluntarily taken upon herself – to guide these little ones through life, into life.

* * *

Philosophy in Photography. Isn’t this word too pretentious when applied to photography?? Photography, which had only just begun to acquire the traits of vividness, began to learn to observe life when it first began to develop its own language, unborrowed from its neighbors? After shooting a photo essay about Shostakovich “The Twelfth Symphony,” an essay filled with psychological search rather than an attempt to philosophize and summarize the theme, an essay which could certainly be considered the author’s greatest success and creative breakthrough, Tarasevich ambitions to create a still higher level of understanding, greater depth of penetration into the subject of the canvas.

His new work should be entitled The Shaping of the Intellect. A photo essay about New York State University. As always, Tarasevich is diligently searching for the form of an essay. A form that, on the one hand, would not look like second-hand. On the other hand, that would allow a clear and succinct realization of the idea of a material in which many problems are woven together, from the problem of continuity and heritage in science to the relationship between scientist and society, between the intellect, armed with a formidable and at times dangerous power, and public morality.

In these years, Tarasevich’s methods are not only influenced by his desire to observe life, but themes emerge that are themselves the process of a long observation of the subject.

Tarasevich shoots an essay called “The End of the Earth.”. Here is an attempt to make philosophical sense of man and eternity. He is not interested in external changes in the life of the peoples of the North. The pictures show neither enormous herds of reindeer nor an abundance of equipment, like helicopters or radios.

All of the above is common knowledge, and for him it is not an end in itself. In an extreme case, it only comes into the frame as a background, as an occasion to express a more precisely observed thought, one that arises from the situation at hand. The main thing for him is the world of man, who, despite progress, remains today, as before, a man facing nature, facing eternity. He is part of it, its reasonable beginning, its child and master. And for him, it is the source of all meaning of existence, an integral part of it.

Each new work by Tarasevich of this period is an attempt to widen the scope of photography, an attempt at philosophical invasion of life. He is filming an essay about a Leningrad scientist. The hero has a hard fate: persecution, camps. And his figure itself is contradictory: there are his ardent supporters and equally staunch opponents in the scientific world. Tarasevich tries to formulate it photographically.

But it is not only photography-symbols that occupy Tarasevich. He’s growing as a storyteller photographer as well, expanding his subject matter. Against the background of problematic, pivotal issues, he does not lose himself as an individual with all his pluses and minuses.

10. At the collective farm construction site. 1958

11. From the topic “Norilsk”. 60’s

Tarasevich is interested in everything, literally in everything that happens there, where he is sent. He shoots even more greedily:

– I understood: if you land at an aerodrome, you have to shoot right away, you cannot put it off. First impressions are the sharpest. Then it’s not the same

One can understand. In our time of “flattened” distances it is difficult to maintain the ability to marvel, i.e. to have time to psychologically reconstruct. Therefore, it is worth appreciating all outbursts of interest in a new place – whether it’s a village or a whole region … As a result, its themes turn into a very large volume of material canvases. This is what “Norilsk” is all about. The story of the city is told in dozens of photos.

Here are fathers with neat sachets in their hands holding squeaky babies. A purely masculine conversation is conducted by fathers. And the proof is a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table with glasses. Tarasevich does not pass judgment, does not judge. He seems to be just dispassionately stating a fact. But sometimes even this is enough to express an attitude. And maybe it’s important to the author that not just anyone should see these fathers, but that they should see themselves from the outside.

Tarasevich’s photographs are acquiring more and more inner plasticity. Such is the case with “In a Cafe”, with a couple’s relationship, different characters, different states, and not at all simple..