WANDERING THROUGH LIFE

Yuri Rost refers to himself simply as a passer-by. He goes through life, taking a look at it. "I have learnt to notice what other people go speeding past and what fails to stimulate their interest," Yuri Rost admits. He comments on everyone of his photographs with a striking and heartfelt caption. Rost himself thinks of himself as a journalist, "illustrating his own articles with photographs". He has worked as a columnist and photo journalist for central Russian newspapers and left his own clear mark on each - in "Komsolmolskaya Pravda" ["Komsomol Pravda"], "Literaturnaya Gazeta" ["Literary Gazette"], "Obshchaya Gazeta" ["Community Newspaper"], and "Moskovskiye Novosti" ["Moscow News"]. At the present time, Rost is a columnist for the "Novaya Gazeta" ["New Newspaper"]. During his photograph exhibition in Baku the Russian journalist Yuri Rost talked to Regionplus about his photographs, famous friends and politics.

- Yuri Mikhaylovich, do you "set up" your photographs or spy them out?

-I try to photograph a person in the situation in which he is, in which his life is going on. That way it is easier for him to be in front of the camera, and it is easier for me to catch the shot that I need. I create the image which seems the most authentic to me. I create the photos and the captions.

- Who is it easier to photograph - famous people or mere mortals?

- It is interesting to photograph interesting people. For me it is not important whether they are famous or not. If I manage psychologically to capture a special moment, to reveal a person, this means it has been a successful shot.

- You mainly have children and old people in your photographs. Why is that?

- Because they don't pretend to be someone else, they don't act. Children still do not know how to create a false image, while old people do not need to. So, the images turn out to be sincere and pure.

- Tell us about your first photograph. Where did it all start?

- I was eight or nine years old. It was in 1947, in the post-war years. I was living in Kiev. My father had volunteered to fight at the front and had been seriously wounded outside Moscow. He was in an army hospital for more than a year. My uncle had got as far as Berlin and brought me a trophy from there, a "Zeiss Ikon" camera with a concertina lens. I remember how I went out into the courtyard and thought for long time what I should photograph. We lived in the block of flats where the Lesa Ukrainka Russian Drama Theatre was situated. I saw my courtyardplaymatesand took my first picture. The photograph, which the adults developed for me at that time, has got lost somewhere, but miraculously I still have the negative. 

 - It would be interesting to know what happened to those in your first photograph.

- One of the kids, Alik Latinskiy lives in Moscow. He was the son of the theatre director and a relative of the great Russian actor Oleg Borisov. The second boy in the picture, Boris Ratimov, became an engineer. The third, Valya Karavayev, the son of Auntie Raya,an usherette, is an actor at the Tovstonogov Theatre. After that, I found it fun taking snaps of everything - the city, adults and children and animals, one after the other. But at that time photography was just my hobby. When I left school, I enrolled at the Kiev Institute of Physical Culture, and, after graduating, I earned my living for a whole year as a swimming instructor at the children's sports club. A year later, I left to study journalism at Leningrad [now St. Petersburg] State University. Starting in 1967, I worked as a special correspondent, a photo journalist, a journalist and a columnist in the publications "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Literaturnaya Gazeta", "Moskovskiye Novosti", "Obshchaya Gazeta" and "Novaya Gazeta".

- What do you regard yourself as? A journalist or a photographer?"

- I am a journalist who illustrates his articles with photographs. I have hardly any photographs at all that have just been printed on their own. All my photographs have "comments" in captions. I have shot kilometres of film over these years. There were numerous trips and meetings, numerous discoveries and even disappointments. But I particularly value that film footage today. You see, it has captured images of towns that have lost their identity and people who have left us forever. Those pictures have captured the past that will never come back, moments that will never recur.

- What is most interesting for you? The photograph or the caption? For example, your famous photograph of a dog waiting at the airport for its owner to come back for two years. Tell us how that sad story ended.

- My friend Valentiy, a pilot who used to fly an Il-18 told me about this remarkable dog. The owner abandoned this dog Palma, one might say, literally at the steps to the plane and flew away forever. For two years this loyal animal lived at Vnukovo airport through rain and snow. It waited for him. The airport staff fed Palma. I found this story very touching and first wrote a piece on it. Then I took the picture and published it in "Komsomolskaya Pravda". That's when it all started! People wrote to the editorial office, sent money for the dog's upkeep and took an interest in its life. Then Vera Kotlyarevskaya, the great grand-daughter of the great Ukrainian writer Kotlyarevskiy, took it back to Kiev with her.

The dog lived with her for a long time, but was very difficult because it was wilful and only settled down once it had had puppies and had its own family in its new home. I was even given one of its puppies as a present. So, it can be considered that the story had a happy ending. But I would like to stimulate interest not in the caption to the photograph, but in reaction of the readers. People responded to it, it touched people's hearts. And that's good. But why is it that people only focus on someone else's misfortune after it is reported in the press? Why don't they pay attention to those who live around them, who need help? There are quite a few lonely old men and women who live around us who need care and love… You simply need to look around you and you will definitely find someone who needs help and the involvement of others…

- Have you been to Baku before? What is there here that might be of interest to you as a photographer?

- I've been here a few times. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances here. I was glad to meet up with Farhad Xalilov, and in Moscow with Yuliy Gusman. Baku has been completely transformed in a short time, and I like what's happened to it. Your city has become a modern European city with attractive buildings and clean streets, but has retained its oriental character. I think I would like to film all of that - the people, the streets, the sea, the sky…

- Yuri Mikhaylovich, who of the characters you've photographed do you particularly remember?

- Every single one without exception. The fact is that I know all the people I have filmed well. I have been friends with many of them for a long time - the film-makers Otar Iosseliani, and Georgiy Daneliya,the writer Andrey Bitov, the artists Ilya Kabakov and Natalya Nesterova, the animatorYuri Norshteyn and many others. I had the good fortune to photograph the most striking personalities. I remember, that in order to photograph Faina Ranevskaya, I had to spend a lot of time persuading Sergey Yursky, in whose play she was acting, to assist me. For a long time, Ranevskaya refused to be photographed, but then, once she had given way, she said that she would allow me "to take a picture", if I would come with Marina Neyolova, whom she was very fond of. We went to the actress's home at the appointed time. So, the photograph turned out to be a very spiritual and sincere one. I am really sorry that I did not manage to photograph [actors] Yevgeniy Leonov, Oleg Yefremov and Innokentiy Smok-tunovskiy.

I thought that life lasts a long time and there would still be the opportunity. Today I would like to photograph the incredibly handsome actor Slava Lyubshin and the charismatic [director and playwright] Mark Zakharov. I want them to be impressed on people's memories forever.