A person may be totally unaware of his or her own beauty.
THE LAST OF THOSE ARDENTLY IN LOVE
My task is to highlight their own importance to them. This is not my maxim, these are words of a Baltic photographer. I remembered them because I myself have been trying to work like this. Have you noticed that when your interlocutor realises your sincere interest, he is transformed? A mask drops off his face. Apprehension and indifference disappear. And the eyes change. Reciprocal interest shines forth, ignited by kind feelings. I have seen many times that people are involuntary looking harder at photos where eyes are luminous in this way. And they get transformed themselves. It is a kind of expansion of the good.
This is how an old-timer at Chukotka, Vladimir Sertun, explains his attitude to photography. He was sorry he could not show me his black and white portraits which had been sent to an exhibition, because: «The rest of it is not quite me, in the sense that what is less captivating, it becomes rather journalism than artistic work».
His photographs refuted his words. It was Chukotka. At times severe, but always beautiful. I have not seen a Chukotka like this. All I could recall were grey landscapes, cold vistas, lifeless expanses... And I thought: a person may be totally unaware of how beautiful the world is. It may be aloof, lacklustre or even hostile — the way I had seen Chukotka. But it may also be as Vladimir Sertun sees it.
One may have no warm feelings for the North. And in this spirit of dislike one may think he is an unbiased chronicler who registers the life as it is. But if you are filled with repulsion and squeamish, if you are looking down at it, or if the current sentiments of northern dwellers, tired of local decline and eager to leave, become contagious, you will willy-nilly reflect your feelings in words or shots, no matter how hard you try to conceal the fact. Whereas creativity has always been able to improve the world, if only a bit. We are not discussing window-dressing here. We are talking about what Vladimir Sertun called expansion of the good. And if I am partial towards Chukotka now, then up to a certain degree it is because I saw the North through his eyes.
Peter MIKHAILOV
Photo(s) by Vladimir SERTUN