"BEAUTY SHOULD BE SHARED!"

Yekaterina Rozhdestvenskaya is a talented Russian photographer who has created a number of original photography projects in which people have a unique opportunity to be transfigured into characters from other eras or even fairy tales. She can perceive beauty in the most minor details. Rozhdestvenskaya tries to live on a positive wave and is confident that kindness will save the world. Recently, the famous photographer visited Baku and shared her impressions in an interview with R+.

- This is your first visit to Baku. Please tell us about your experiences during the trip. What did you like most of all?

- I came to Baku at the invitation of Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu who turned 70 at the beginning of February. Close friends and fellow performers arrived from all over the former Soviet Union to celebrate his birthday. Of course, I was pleased to meet all those people and get acquainted with your beautiful city and its inhabitants. I had wished to visit Baku for a long time as I heard a lot about the beauty of this city and the hospitality of its people from my father (the prominent Soviet poet Robert Rozhdestvensky. - Ed.). And an invitation to the anniversary of Polad Bulbuloglu could not have come at a better time. We had a great time and celebrated his birthday at the Palace of Heydar Aliyev. It was a marvellous concert! Everyone was amazed at Polad's energy and drive he displayed on stage. I even thought he had fibbed a little about his age. Singing, dancing and playing host for five and a half hours - that was something... Polad is in great shape!

As for Baku, I think this is one of the most interesting and beautiful cities I've ever seen. And I really like the unusual combination of past and present, ancient and modern that has harmoniously blended into the architecture and everyday life. When I talked to Bakuvians, I saw great love and pride for their city gleaming in their eyes. Believe me, not every city can boast of such grateful and patriotic citizens.

- While in Baku, you managed to share lots of photos taken in our city. Suppose you were to prepare a photography project related to Baku, what would you dedicate it to?

- To people, in the first place. All my projects are dedicated to people. This is my way of trying to at least slightly change life, make it better and more beautiful. One can take pictures of beautiful, positive faces with good, luminous eyes and an open smile. Such images warm up the heart and make you realize that the good still does exist. It is just around the corner, but we let it pass unnoticed all too often.

- You graduated from MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations] University majoring in International Relations. Then you translated fiction from English and French. How come that you decided to engage in photography?

- I turned to photography by chance. My husband presented me with a good, expensive camera and I began to try my hand in photography. It was then that I conceived an unusual project called "Private Collection" which featured various stars. My first model was my girlfriend and a citizen of Baku, Irina Allegrova, who starred as Nefertiti. I asked my husband to appraise my work, and he liked it so much that he offered to publish a photo project in his magazine Caravan of Stories (Ekaterina's spouse Dmitry Biryukov heads the Seven Days publishing house that publishes the Caravan of Stories magazine, whereas Yekaterina herself is the editor-in-chief of the Seven Days magazine. - Ed.). At first, I used my own apartment as a studio but very soon it became inconvenient and I decided to organize a workroom elsewhere.

- Last year saw an anniversary of your creative activity as the first exhibit of your "Private Collection" came into being 15 years ago. How many portraits are there in the collection now?

- I cannot tell you exactly how many portraits I have, but over that time, I have managed to take pictures of about 5,000 people.

- How do you choose the characters for your projects?

- First of all, it should be a media personality, so that there is no need to explain to the readers who is in the photo and what this person is known for. Such as Lyudmila Gurchenko or Larisa Dolina or Yuli Gusman. They are known to everybody, young and old. Typically, I make up a project image of a star myself. As an artist, I can see better what personality a given star can be "reincarnated" into. You know, when a patient comes to a doctor for help and proposes his/her own methods of treatment, nothing good will come of it.

- You have been working with celebrities quite a lot. Who was the most interesting person to talk to?

- For me, such a person has always been and will remain to be Lyudmila Gurchenko. She was such a wonderful and exquisite woman, an incredible actress and an amazing person that I will probably never meet a star of her calibre again. I will always remember her.

- Your father, Robert Rozhdestvensky, was a very serious and sedate man. But you might have other memories about your father...

- I would not say that my father was serious, let alone sedate. He had a great sense of humour. Many of my friends still remember his sparkling risible eyes and open smile. My father had a rather unusual sense of humour. He could tell incredibly funny stories with a serious and sometimes grim expression on his face. All around him were dying of laughter. My dad was a very kind and sympathetic person; he helped people a lot and never said a word about it. He was incredibly modest and very sincere. For me, my father is an ideal person; I have never met anyone like my father in my entire life. He was one of a kind…

- Do you remember the moment when you realized that your father was a great poet?

- I remember that moment very clearly. This happened in the mid-1960s. I was about nine or ten years old. My mother took me to the Luzhniki stadium to attend my father's poetry readings. The stadium was filled up with people. At that time, there were no large plasma screens on which spectators could see the face of a speaker. I saw a small figure of my father standing in the centre of the stage built in the stadium. He was so small that he looked like an ant. He read his poems into the microphone, and all the people around me repeated them after him in a whisper, as if praying. It was then that I realized that the little ant - because of whom thousands of people came here after queuing up for a ticket and putting aside all of their businesses - was unusual and special. And that was my father! The dad had a remarkable ability to captivate human souls by means of poetry. I remember that after the readings people were leaving the stadium with a smile on their lips. They were invigorated with the terrific energy of my father.

- Did you try to write poetry yourself?

- One cannot try writing poetry. A person either can or cannot write it. I think poets are born, not made. I remember once I had to translate poems from English into Russian. It was an incredibly tricky business, I should say! While it took me a month to translate a whole novel, I spent the entire week translating just one quatrain!

- Please tell us about your family. Does anyone of your sons follow in the steps of their famous grandfather?

- My eldest son, Aleksey, is an economist. He is fond of e-sports and music and is the leader of a rock band. He sets poems of his grandfather to music. My middle son, Dmitry, is a restaurateur and a professional kart racer who repeatedly became the winner of various competitions. Recently, he opened a cafe where the visitors are offered to taste dishes that were prepared and are still prepared in our family. Dishes my father liked and dishes he was happy to cook for his guests and friends. My youngest son, Danilo, has just turned 14 and wants to be a surgeon.

- What would you like to see during your next visit to Baku?

- I would like to see the famous Baku spring I was told so much about. I would like to see not only Baku, but also the whole of Azerbaijan. I would travel with my camera all over Azerbaijan, wander into the farthest corners of the country, and take a look at how people live and have a chat with them. And then I would share these photos with everyone! After all, the beauty should be shared, right?