Vadim Gippenreiter: Our Everything

Going to see Vadim Gippenreiter was like going on a first date: I was nervous, nervous, late. I haven’t seen him in a long time. It means a lot to me – and in

human and photographic. There are such rare magical people. Vadim Gippenreiter is one of them. When I worked at Ogonyok, I used to come to him for photos. We talked, he told us about his life and its vicissitudes. It’s strange, but I’ve never felt a difference in age. I have never had the feeling that he is of a different generation, lost in time, backward or has no understanding of anything in this life. He was absolutely aware of everything, absolutely modern. And I took his formula of longevity “don’t sit on the couch but move”. When I feel absolutely bad, I remember him, and I feel better, a way out of seemingly hopeless situation arises of its own accord.

It struck me from the first moment I saw it. It was hard to believe that the energetic, trim figure of a man of seventy or more. He differed sharply from photographers I knew: verbosity, scale of personality and thinking, self-esteem, absence of envy, ability to keep a distance in communication, weightiness of judgment, behind which one could feel great experience. And something else that is difficult to describe with words, which is sometimes called “energy,” but has different meanings.

Thanks to Gippenreiter, to our conversations with him, I understood that photography is a concentration of the energy of the photographer and the photographed, the convergence in the point in time of the energy of the photographer, the object and the energy of space. And the frame is just a way to archive and transmit that energy to the viewer. If there’s a lot of energy in a picture, it hits the viewer right in the solar plexus. It’s the same in painting and other visual arts. Works charged with the energy of creation live long and break through the thickness of time, remain in the history of art, no matter when they were made.

And the following happened to my article in “Ogonyok” about Vadim Gippenreiter. I wrote the text, chose the photos and went to the photo festival in Arles. When I came back, I found out that the text had been halved and decided to give large pictures of. The editor on duty did not pay much attention, he just cut the “tail”. It turned out to be complete nonsense. I called Vadim Evgenievich to apologize. He laughed and told me not to worry, so as not to spoil my complexion.

Another time the “Ogonyok” scanner, having received a slide of Vadim Evgenievich “Meschera. Pouring the River Pry”, he decided to “improve it” and made the sky blue and the water greenish. We managed to fix it in the signature pages.

This time, as usual, Vadim Evgenievich came out to meet me. Shook my hand firmly. Eyes are alive. The same posture. He said he did not go anywhere, but every day he went for a walk and walked about a kilometer. His daughter Maria Vadimovna, amazingly similar to her father, is going through his archives and preparing a four-volume edition of Vadim Gippenreiter’s. Vadim Evgenievich helped her. An album of his best photographs from 60 years of work – a longtime dream of his.

Two years ago, Vadim used to go Alpine skiing. Then he was hit by a streetcar as he walked to the clinic. Maria Vadimovna nursed him back to health. The trips to the mountains have been forgotten.

This year is a jubilee year for the Master. On April 22 he celebrated his 95th birthday. On May 3 in Kremlin the president awarded him the Order of Honor for great services in development of national culture and art and many years of fruitful activity.

An exhibition of his works “Ancient Monuments of America. Golden Ring” was held in April at the “Rabochy i Kolkhoznitsa” exhibition center with great success. His work is actively sought after by collectors. His name is a brand in itself. He introduced the fashion to Kamchatka, the Kommanders and the Kurils. There is not a single established landscape photographer who would not walk “in Gippenreiter’s footsteps.

When I think about the scope and significance of Vadim Evgenievich’s work in world photography, I realize that it is no less significant than, for example, that of Ansel Adams. Only the latter preferred black-and-white film, while Vadim Gippenreiter preferred color. Their comments on nature photography, on photographic technique are much the same, as if they knew each other, as their love for nature, inner freedom and the power of the impression that their technically flawless work makes.

He was born on April 22, 1917, in the village of Potylikha, across from present-day Luzhniki. She doesn’t remember her father. He was killed in 1917. Father was an officer in the tsarist army, four times awarded the Order of St. Anna for bravery. Vadim’s mother was a peasant, a village teacher. Vadim Gippenreiter had to start moonlighting early on – unloading a bargeload of firewood, carrying sand in a wheelbarrow from the river to the road, people in a boat from one bank of the New York River to the other.

I had no problems at school. After finishing school he entered the Faculty of Biology at New York University – he was interested in everything that had to do with nature. Three months after admission, he was expelled because of his father’s noble birth. Got accepted to medical school. They opened a special sports course there, and by that time Vadim had become the USSR champion in alpine skiing. His mentor was Gustav Deberl, a professional guide on the Austrian Alps.

Vadim managed to do everything: play rugby, ski jump, and run a marathon. He studied easily at the institute, received an increased scholarship. In his free time, he went to the studio, studied drawing. In 1937, they started trials of people’s enemies. 1939, war with Finland. All the skiers, including Vadim Yevgenievich, were mobilized, but they let him go home after two days. He quit medical school after three years. In the fall of 1940, he became a student at the New York Art Institute. In 1941 the war broke out. A summons from the military registration and enlistment office came – Gippenreiter came with his belongings, but they let him go “until further notice”. The New York Art Institute was evacuated to Samarkand. Classes were interspersed with agricultural work. Among his teachers were great artists: Robert Falk, Vladimir Favorsky, Alexander Matveyev.

At the end of winter 1945 the institute was returned to New York. Classes continued in cold rooms. It was hard to get a job. The only steady income came from my job as a sports coach. In 1948, Vadim graduated from the college and gained a degree in sculpture, but his employment did not improve: the cult of personality flourished, only portraits of leaders and shockworkers of the Soviet Union were paid for. Vadim took up photography.

At first he shot sports. Then he became interested in hunting and “through hunting came to photographing nature in all its manifestations. For the first time he got good money for his photo essays, having been published in Izvestia Windows. I have always remembered the words of Volchek, the art editor of Izvestia: “Shoot as you shoot. Don’t pay attention to anyone. Everyone shoots in their own way. Try not to be like anyone else.

After Window Izvestia, Vadim Gippenreiter’s photo essays were published in the magazines Smena, Ogonyok, and Vokrug Sveta Around the World . From that moment photography became work, and Vadim Yevgenyevich was no longer thinking about a single picture, but about a theme:

– I don’t do individual photography at all. Always doing a book, whether it’s published or not. I only have an idea, which I methodically string on the visual material. First I find a place that attracts me, interests me, worries me, evokes a special attitude. It could be an old town, the nature of the region or just a view from a single point. I look at any object from the perspective of a future album.

Khrushchev’s thaw came. Magazines began to publish his photographs of monuments and landscapes, but no permanent job. In 1959, Gippenreiter was admitted to the Union of Journalists of the USSR, even though he was not a member of any editorial board. From expeditions, complicated hikes, volcanoes in Kamchatka, and whaling, he brought back materials that magazines willingly printed. Publishers became interested in his photo essays and the first albums with his photos were published: “A Hunter’s Handbook” 1955 , “The Belovezhskaya Pushcha” 1964 , “In the Mountains of Karachaevo-Cherkessia” 1967 .

In 1967 an album about nature without a single person, “Tales of the American Forest,” was published. The chief artist of the publisher took responsibility for the “apolitical” nature of the book and for the fact that it was supposed to settle in stores. The book has been blown off the shelves!

He was not a pioneer or a member of the Komsomol, and never joined the staff of any editorial office or publishing house. All my life I have been an independent photographer, whose name was better known in the West than in America.

– Is there something you regret or something you haven’t done? – I asked Vadim Evgenievich good-bye.

– I have no regrets, he answered succinctly.

Vadim Gippenreiter about photography. From the book “My America”. ACT, 2011

“Photography is not art per se. This is a statement of fact. An artist creates his own objects, a photographer states existing objects. The only thing you can “elevate” a photograph with is your own attitude, to try to translate that attitude into some kind of images.

“I shoot what I like. You have to carry your own attitude and perception of a landscape. A landscape is first of all a connection between your inner state and the state of nature. It can be interesting, or it can be indifferent.”.

“To get a good feel for a landscape, you have to live in it for a while.”.

“Nature itself, in all its manifestations, in all its seasons, is incredibly active. It’s always a change, which comes first in light, sunny weather, then in snowfalls and blizzards. When I was developing it myself, I adjusted something with the development, introduced some elements of conventionality with the help of filters.

Most difficult to get away from naturalism. I use light filters, different distances, the construction of the frame.”.

“This is my attitude, my way of construction, among a thousand others I recognize it. If you sit five artists down in front of them and draw one person, you will make five different portraits, which is nothing less than a self-portrait for each of the artists. It is his attitude, his decision, his challenge. It’s about the same thing I decide when I’m shooting nature. The way I imagine it. I only take pictures that interest me. I know for sure that if I have somehow perceived it, if I liked it, then sooner or later it will find its use. I liked it – there would be those who would also like it, who would somehow get into it.”.

“I went to Kamchatka for forty-five years. Made several albums: eruptions, landscapes, animals, birds. I was on Tobachik from the first to the last eruption, which lasted almost a year, I took pictures, I kept diaries. The life of a volcano is the story of the Earth.”.

“A still life is first and foremost a mood – its own mood and the mood of the objects from which it is composed. I have two different types of still lifes: some are natural, with branches, vegetables, fruit, and others are conceptual. It’s basically the same thing, although they give a very different feeling.

Before staging a still life, you have to imagine these objects in your head. There’s no point in moving things around and seeing what happens. Until you present it, there’s no clarity about it. A still life should be organized so that everything is organic and meaningful. And, of course, the quality of the surface has to be readable.

The background can be different, as well as the lighting.

Still life in photography solves the same problems as in painting, that is, the relationship of the objects to the plane. The plane means to create space. Like two walls of a flat aquarium: so that the plane is not destroyed at the back and is designed in front. On this principle is built bas-relief. To pierce the surface to infinity means to ruin the plane.

When creating a composition everything should be subordinated to the rhythm. There has to be a certain rhythm in the relationship between the objects, and there shouldn’t be many of them. A still life of two or three or five objects solves the same problems as the multi-figure work”.

“All temples have always been placed in the most beautiful places, and temples visually unite the vast territory. They became the center of the whole area. The temple is like a monument around which all the most important events of history and human life unfold. And temples used to be close in spirit to the human condition.”.

“Material and photographic equipment play a big role. Excessive number of lenses, cameras and photographic material complicates the work, distracts from the possibility of many options. In addition, they are physically binding in expeditionary conditions, when every gram is taken into account, – everything is carried on you. Three basic lenses solve all my problems. Also the photographic film, which I already know, and the wooden camera. The large format 13×18 camera has all the angles, you can see the quality of the surface, there is the possibility of perspective corrections, sharpening individual plans, which is not the case with conventional narrow-format cameras. Working with a large-format camera is a great commitment, it broadens your options. You start to really get into photography.”.

Appeal to admirers of Vadim Gippenreiter’s talent

Vadim Gippenreiter’s Photo Heritage Foundation addresses to all those not indifferent to his creative work with a request to support the project of publishing the author’s photoalbum “Protected America”.

Financial assistance, if possible, will allow to fulfill the long-cherished dream of Vadim Evgenievich – to publish a book, which would include the best from his huge archive, collected in 60 years of active shootings.

The offered edition is the four-volume book, consisting of equal logical parts, which cover different regions of America: “The Nature of the Middle zone”, “Great mountains and rivers of America” the Caucasus, the Urals, Sayany, Siberia , “The American North” and “The land of great volcanoes and islands” the Kurils, the Commanderies, Kamchatka . Along with well-known works of the author, the album will include photographs that have never been published before. This album, dedicated to America’s reserved America, will be Vadim Evgenievich’s final work.

On the 22nd of April Vadim Evgenievich turned 95 years old and the publication of this album will be the best present for him.

Also, as part of our anniversary year, we plan to hold a large photo exhibition “Protected America” and to coincide with the release of this album. To raise funds, we offer for sale on special terms the works of Vadim Gippenreiter to begin forming corporate collections, private collections and interior decoration a collection of ten works worth $20,000 . . The works are made in a modern technique, have a certificate of origin, signed by the author. It is also possible to buy a limited edition of the author’s future book 100 copies of the book . – 20 000 USD. .

The publication of the “Protected America” photo album and the exhibition of the same name are planned with the funds raised by the Foundation, and the album will raise the necessary funds to continue to work with the archive to digitize and organize it, as well as to hold future photography exhibitions.

The total cost of the project is $80,000. We would welcome any monetary donations, from individuals and organizations alike. We are grateful for your help and support at the beginning of a long way, which we hope to pass together with admirers of Vadim Evgenievich Gippenreiter’s talent.

Here’s a link to our online project, where you can learn more about how to make a transfer //start.volcano eruption

Sincerely, Maria Gippenreiter, Director of the Foundation.

Kamchatka. volcano eruption

Kamchatka. Karymsky volcano

The Pskov Kremlin. Pskov River. Trinity cathedral, the bell tower

Meschera. River Pry spill

Meschera. April. Floodplain forest

Kamchatka. Uzon Caldera – the giant crater of an ancient volcano

Still Life

Aspen trees

Still Life

Kamchatka. Eruption of Klyuchevskoy volcano, 1964

Kamchatka. A volcano erupting

Lake of the river Chuna. Sunset

Caucasus. Alibek Glacier. Teberda