Yu. Yeryomin

Yuri Eremin (Russian: Юрий Ерёмин; 1881, Kazanskaya, Voyskoy Donskoy Oblast — 1948, At a young age he lost his parents, and from the age of two his education was taken over by his grandfather Pavel Petrovich Besschetnov. According to one version, Eremin is the illegitimate son of a Don Cossack and an Italian painter, who came as part of an artel to paint the Stanitsa church. After the boy's birth, his father and comrades fled, fearing reprisals from the mother's compatriots. The child's surname was invented and he received his patronymic from his great-grandfather.

Eremin studied at the and was successful in all subjects. At that time, he began to draw secretly. As a young man, Eremin attended a short course for drawing teachers at the Novocherkassk Teachers' Seminary. For some time after that he worked in a small school on the Verkhnechirsky farm in the village of Migulinskaya stanitsa. The salary was low, and he took papers for rewriting, moonlighted as a reader for the local landowner, and in the summer worked in the coal mines of Donbass. In 1900, the young man entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the class of Apollinarius Vasnetsov.

According to some sources, Yuri Eremin graduated from the school in 1905, received the title of independent artist, and then worked professionally in the Crimea: he made commissioned portraits, painted rich mansions, and designed sets for an amateur theater. although in an earlier book, published in 1955, he wrote that Eremin graduated from the school)

First steps in photography

In 1909, Yuri Eremin successfully married, and thanks to his dowry he received funds for traveling in Europe. where he initially joined the formalist group.

Eremin's teachers at the Russian Photographic Society (RPS) were the photographers Anatoly Trapani and Sergei Savrasov (nephew of the painter Alexei Savrasov). They adhered to the pictorialist direction in art photography and were active participants in a small creative group called Molodoye Iskusstvo (Young Art). At that time he considered photography to be "the art of small forms", so he paid great attention to the careful finishing of the print and its external design. In 1913, Eremin took a course in copper and zinc engraving; he turned some of his photographic landscapes into etchings. In 1914, Eremin opened a photographic studio in Moscow called Secession, which was engaged in the creation of artistic pavilion portraits. The biography of photographer Valery Stigneev tells a different story. According to his version, Eremin worked as an X-ray technician in a Moscow hospital during World War I, and since 1915, in one of the organizations of the All-Russian Zemsky Union.Efn|Attempts have been made to reconcile the two versions. For example, the Russian Museum website reported that Eremin was first the head of the x-ray room at the free Soldatenkovskaya hospital, and then in 1915, he was drafted into the army (according to Valery Valran, he was drafted in 1916, and served until 1918, the same point of view adopted by Valery Stigneev in his 2016 book on the history of Soviet photography). Another sequence of events is presented in a 2000, article by Anatoly Chulkov: first Eremin serves in the army as a photojournalist, and from 1915 he works as a private radiographer. Art historian, candidate of philosophy Valery Stigneev was surprised that the only mention of Eremin in connection with photography in the press at that time was his election as a member of the board of the RPS for the period 1915–1918.

In 1924, Eremin traveled to the Crimea, and from then on the peninsula became a favorite subject in his work. As a member of the photographic section of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Eremin regularly sent his works to foreign photo salons and exhibitions. As late as 1928, Eremin took part in seven international exhibitions in Europe and America. In 1926, he became the chairman of the art photography section of the Russian Photographic Society. In the article "On 'right-wing' influences in photography" (Soviet Photographic Almanac, 1929), the art critic L. Mezhericher wrote: "I would strongly attribute nude pictures to the legacy of bourgeois pictorial art. This motif turns out to be a favorite of those photographers who are furthest removed from the image of modern reality". In this article, in the list of "right-wing" photographers, Yuri Eremin's name was in fourth place.

Despite criticism, the major Soviet magazines USSR on Construction, Ogoniok, Our Achievements, Thirty Days, and Sovetskoe Foto continued to publish Eremin's photographs in the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s. In the late 1920s, Eremin traveled to the Volga, the Urals, the Altai, and Central Asia. In 1932, together with Alexander Grinberg, he led the work of enlarging portraits of Lenin and Stalin and images of the largest construction sites of the time to decorate 25-meter high facades of buildings in the center of Moscow for the May Day holiday, for which he was awarded the gratitude of SOYUZPHOTO. Photographic historian Vladimir Levashov pointed out that the three photographers invited by Bukharin represented different and contradictory trends of the time: Rodchenko was a "left" radical, Skurikhin a representative of documentary photo reportage, and Eremin a "right" conservative.

In 1936, during a discussion on formalism and naturalism in photography, the photographer was again criticized. The main complaint against Eremin was that he "photographed the old life in such a way that the viewer felt sorry for this life and went back in time"; other accusations were a preoccupation with landscape, which allegedly "distracted from Soviet reality", a fascination with Asian exoticism, and a predilection for depicting landowners' estates. The photographer was forced to admit his mistakes and promised to improve.

In 1937, together with 29 other photo correspondents, Eremin traveled along the Moscow Canal. The pictures were presented at an exhibition in the Central House of Journalists. After that, Eremin retired from practical work and devoted his activities to other spheres: A photographic club at the Moscow House of Scientists of the USSR Academy of Sciences (he was its head from 1928 until his death, selection of negatives for the design of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, reviewing the text and selecting illustrations for a book about it. Dr. Olga Sviblova, director of the Moscow House of Photography, wrote about Eremin's photographic work at that time: "Despite... persecution, the masters of Russian pictorial photography continued their creative activity. For example, Yuri Eremin, locked in the bathroom of a huge communal apartment, secretly printed copies of his favorite pictures in microformat. Any one of them could become sufficient evidence for repression". Valery Stigneev claimed that in the late 1930s, Eremin's photographs were not included in print publications or sent to exhibitions. ). Kira Dolinina, associate professor at the Faculty of Art History of the European University in St. Petersburg, based on their close acquaintance and participation in the publication of the album Moscow in Berlin in 1926, compared the work of two Russian pictorialists: Alexander Greenberg and Yuri Eremin. In the latter's work, she found similarities with the paintings of Arnold Böcklin and Vasily Vereshchagin as opposed to the neorealism of Greenberg, statics instead of dynamics, "sadness and longing" instead of "iron hand," poetry instead of "stamped step”.

In the 1910s, Eremin worked with generalities: he stopped working with the small details in the photo, that accurately indicated the time and place of the shot, the surroundings, and tried to focus the viewer's attention on the subjective experiences and impressions of the author. According to Fomin, this was his way of fighting against the documentary nature of photography. His work of this period is characterized by moods of sadness and anxiety, he was attracted by the intricate weave of branches, unusual shape of clouds, reflections in mirrors and water surfaces. His photographs were dominated by dark tonality and the contours of the subjects were blurred. Flares or spots of light allowed the photographer to emphasize the main element of the image. In Eremin's pictures, romantic moods prevailed, landscapes were sometimes decorative, and the photographer was fond of techniques that created an abstract, ideal beauty.

The mid-1920s marked a turning point in Eremin's work. He began to lean more toward the natural means of expression of photography. This is evidenced by the realistic photographs of architectural monuments in Moscow and the Moscow suburbs that he began to take. Along with the refinement of the frame during printing, he began to work on the construction of the image during the shooting itself. From then on, he paid special attention to natural lighting, linear and tonal perspective. In pictures of architectural monuments, he tried to trace the architect's idea, its relationship with the surrounding nature, the weather on the day of the shooting. The works retained their emotionality but acquired a documentary character. At the same time, they continued to have an intimate and aesthetic character.

Some historians of photography have urged not to exaggerate the changes in the photographer's work. Sergei Morozov, for example, wrote: "Only sometimes his work approaches the new, documentary-reportage approach to photography, they [Yuri Eremin and Sergei Ivanov-Alliluev] generally remained true to themselves: they did not part with their attachment to the picturesque, pictorial photography of the beginning of the century". At the same time, in an earlier book published in 1955, the same Morozov expressed a completely different point of view. While acknowledging that the photographer was influenced by Impressionism, he argued that even before the revolution". Eremin and Andreev remained realists in their best works. Eremin, although he allowed in landscapes abstraction or stylization under some "invented", "ideal" nature, and understatement sometimes passed in his landscapes in a mystery, — it was a short-lived passion. A passionate tourist who traveled thousands of kilometers with his camera, Eremin could not remain within the narrow confines of "conventional photography" for long. He also claimed that in Soviet times the photographer was able to "decisively overcome decadent influences" and was a consistent realist.

Galina Orlova, a contemporary sociologist, wrote that the Soviet authorities had long perceived Eremin as a person who was unable to "perceive reality through the prism of ideologically arranged knowledge about it. He was therefore declared blind because he had long been unable to see "our wonderful life, our joyful country. After Eremin went to the Moscow-Volga Canal with other masters of photography and took "beautiful, epic photographs," "the political-ophthalmological diagnosis was removed from him. According to Orlova, Yuri Eremin "not only saw the known (the beauty and greatness of the Soviet land) himself, but also made it visible to others". In her opinion, with his photographs, he made it possible "to see the realization of the main goals of the Soviet utopian project — a new man and a transformed reality". Yury Eremin. View towards Ilyinsky Gates of Kitay-gorod from the monument Plevna Chapel, early 1910s. MAMM / MDF Anatoly Fomin in his book about Yuri Eremin's work emphasized the following two main themes of his work:

Architectural monuments: Between 1919 and 1947, the photographer took about 200 pictures of Moscow, many of the monuments he photographed have not survived to this day. He managed to photograph some unique events, such as the flooding of the Moscow River, which rose from its banks to the walls of the Kremlin. He also photographed about 130 estates of the Moscow region (about 2000 negatives). Each time Eremin collected maximum information about the building and the architect who built it, the features of its architectural style, which allowed to create a correct idea of the monument in the public. He familiarized himself with the photographs of his predecessors and the paintings of Russian artists who depicted it. He inspected the building at different times of the day, carefully made a shooting plan and thought about each frame in detail. The pictures taken on behalf of the Izvestia editorial staff as the newspaper's photo correspondent in the USSR's national periphery are both views of landscapes and sketches of folk life. Often, the photographer's subject was national handicrafts. These images were usually accompanied by a small text commentary. Valery Stigneev and Valery Valran wrote in their books that this was caused by the beginning of the persecution of pictorial photography: "Eremin tried to fit into the reportage style of the time. However, this attempt failed, his work remained lyrical and poetic, and the Party needed "cheerful collective optimism and propaganda posters". Eremin's work was not successful.

At the same time, Valery Valran and Valery Stigneev noted that Eremin showed himself in all genres of photography: genre painting, nude, portrait (still life, marinism) ... He was particularly interested in the nude genre, to which he returned periodically: "The nudes in his photographs —chaste and romantic— are masterfully integrated into the landscape and become part of it". According to Valrand, the stylistics of Eremin's work were also diverse — impressionism, symbolism, expressionism, and constructivism. He used a variety of cameras, including a Leica. Eremin shot with a monocle lens and also designed his own lenses. He invented a special photographic enlarger and used various techniques to print positives.

Famous photographs

Gurzuf Vittore Crivelli. Madonna and Child, last quarter of the 15th Century (49×35.3 cm, tempera and gilding on wood). Wawel Castle (Inventory No. 7959). The technique used by Jeremin was employed by Renaissance artists According to Anatoly Fomin, the photograph Gurzuf, taken in 1927, is considered the first in which Eremin departed from his previously familiar pictorialist style. It is one of Eremin's best-known photographs and has been reproduced many times in books on photography. It has also been published as a postcard. According to Fomin, it won a total of about fifty awards at photo exhibitions in different countries at different times. He wrote that this photo became a benchmark of Eremin's artistic style and a classic in the history of Soviet photography. The photo was taken without the stylization of Impressionist paintings. Fomin wrote that the photographer was able to convey "misty air" and "sunlit distance". Eremin placed a branch in the foreground that seems to overhang the viewer's head, gradually leading the eye into the distance, "where the sky and the sea merge in a transparent mist".

Valery Valran, an art historian, artist, and candidate of psychological sciences, wrote differently about the creation of photography. In 1924, the Russian Photographic Society sent Yuri Eremin on a photographic expedition to the Crimea. According to him, it was a moment when Eremin took this picture. A year later, there was an exhibition and discussion of the works of Soviet photographers in the Crimea. Eremin read his report Crimea in Art Photography. According to Valran and Stigneev, the photo Gurzuf was exhibited in 27 countries and received 14 awards. They wrote that the branch in the foreground in Soviet photography "became a kind of stamp", and the technique introduced by the photographer was called the Eremin branch..

The photographer recalled that fog was not common in Crimea, and he had to wait a long time for such weather to take a picture. When the fog finally came, it lifted so quickly that the photographer had time to take the only picture that turned out to be successful. Eremin's friend G. Y. Artyukhov confirmed that the photographer once saw Gurzuf in the fog by chance, when he did not have a camera with him. After that, Eremin climbed the rock every morning for ten days in order not to miss the moment he needed.

Su-Azu Waterfall In 1935, Eremin traveled to the North Caucasus on behalf of the Izvestia editorial staff. He carefully planned his clothing and equipment, made his own tent and sleeping bag, and bought mountaineering boots. On the trip he took a German camera Leica, which was then little known in the USSR. In Dagestan, he was fascinated by scenes from the national life and aulas - anthills. He then visited the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Region. There he focused on pictures of mountain pastures and waterfalls. He was very impressed by the Chegem Gorge and the waterfalls cascading down its cliffs. He wrote: "I photographed one of the Su-Azu waterfall, falling from a dizzying height, and a swirling lake covered with water foam, opening the way for new waterfalls. How much energy there is in this giant! The place is begging for a power plant".

Yuri Eremin has repeatedly admitted that he loved to photograph water: it was a verbatim record of a conversation Eremin had with photographers on March 27, 1946, on the eve of the All-Union Photo Exhibition, recorded by G.Y. Artyukhov, who was present. In 1966 the publishing house Iskusstvo published a book by Anatoly Fomin Photographer Y.P. Eremin. 1881-1948. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of articles appeared in reputable professional and socio-political publications. In 1982, for example, a new section Masters of Light Painting appeared in the magazine Sovetskoe Foto. The first photographer to receive an article in this section was Yuri Eremin. The exhibition was widely covered by the press. Such publications as Izvestia and the weekly Kommersant Weekend devoted articles to it.

Yuri Eremin is a minor character in the novel Horse Dose, published by the Eksmo publishing house and written by Sergei Zverev, who is behind a whole group of contemporary Russian detective writers. The action takes place in Moscow in the 1920s, when Eremin was actually working in the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department.

Eremin's personality Valery Stigneev, candidate of philosophical sciences, researcher at the State Institute of Art History, author of several books on the history of Russian photographic art of tsarist Russia and the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, called him "the most colorful (both in life and in his work) personality among photographers" of his era. meetings of artists, photographers, painters, sculptors and scientists took place.

Eremin taught his students to analyze photographs, emphasized the need for a photographer to have "artistic culture," which he understood as knowledge of the theory, history, historiography, and methodology of fine art. The author of the book about Eremin's work, Anatoly Fomin, attended some of the photographer's classes and wrote that he saw in them "people in love with photography, people obsessed with photography, who spend all their free time working in the circle", and quoted the words of Eremin's student Zakhar Vinogradov, who "came to classes as if it were a holiday".