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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: Leningrad 80s >> ART>>
Reconstructing E-E KOZLOV's photo archive from the 1980s
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Chapter 4. Colour photography Soviet shops sold a small variety of colour slide and negative films. The negative films were based on the German AGFA technique (another war trophy). The film speed was comparable to that of black and white negative films. But processing and printing those films at home was a laborious affair leading to uncertain results, while the quality achieved by a local laboratory was also quite unpredictable. Colour photography remained, generally speaking, the realm of professional photographers, although even in photographic studios, portrait pictures were often done in black and white and then hand-coloured and retouched.
When I travelled through the Soviet Union in 1987, I saw such hand-coloured portraits in the showcase of a photographic studio in some smaller town, perhaps in Suzdal, and was quite surprised to see the tradition of this artistic craft still alive. Many people had “real” colour portraits made during their holidays. In tourist resorts like Yalta (Crimea) or Yurmala (Latvia), souvenir photographers would take pictures of tourists near a monument or at the beach, and you could then pick up your photo the next day. We may speculate about whether Evgenij Kozlov would have used colour photography in the 1980s had it been more accessible. But from the point of view of his art, black and white photography served his purpose perfectly, because, as he said recently, “I see colours when I look at a black and white picture”. He coloured many of his photographs applying a variety of translucent and covering paints, but always added new features, often combining them with collage techniques. Therefore, his approach to painting black and white photographs is reminiscent of traditional techniques of hand-colouring pictures only to a degree.
In those years, Kozlov used a colour negative film only once. The film material – a Svema 35 mm film – was produced in February 1987 (regarding the dating see Chapter 6, Svema and Tasma filmstrip edge markings). The first couple of pictures show Brain Eno as a guest of New Composers Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev. The main part of the pictures was shot in Kozlov’s Peterhof flat, including a performance of Kozlov with poet Andrey Solovyev. The colours are indeed rendered somewhat erratically. In the first part of the film, they are fairly true, but in the second part, a yellow tint dominates. What we don’t know is when Kozlov actually bought the film – perhaps to document the encounter with Brain Eno – and how it was stored up to that time h used it. According to Valery Alakhov, the meeting with Brian Eno took place in June 1988, but judging by the following pictures, it must have been in 1987. The pictures are nevertheless quite interesting, last but not least with regard to the artwork they document.
Using colour reversal films instead of negatives was an option if you needed just slides and no paper prints. In this case, Orwochrom films were the first choice; they were imported from the GDR. Orwo was the follow-up label to Agfa, and East Germany exported Orwo films to many western countries, too. Orwochrom came with 32 (UT 16) und with 50 ASA (UT 18), later there was also a film with 100 ASA (UT21). In Kozlov’s archive, there is a small number of Orwochrom films of all three types. The oldest one is from the late 1970s. It has mainly portraits and shows the artist with long hair. The next is from 1984 and has views of Peterhof and some pictures with his friends in Leningrad. Another one from December 1985 documented a Pop Mekhanika concert at the Leningrad Rock Club more>>. Finally, there is an extensive series with young Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe as Marilyn Monroe. Kozlov shot these pictures with (probably) two UT21 films at his Leningrad studio “The Russian Field” in early 1990.
All Orwo films have colour fogs, but of different kinds, from blue to brown, and these variations might come from variations in the film processing process. But the images are still much better than those of an unmarked colour reversal films – no numbers, or company name near the sprocket holes – Kozlov shot at the New Artists collage exhibition in 1984 more>>. Alexander Boyko, a Leningrad photographer befriended with artists and musicians, also shot some Orwochrom colour slides of Kozlov’s works around 1984; they are now in Kozlov’s archive. These pictures are actually quite good and are important documents of Kozlov’s paintings. I assume that if you were a regular customer to a professional photo laboratory, you would find a way to make sure your films were being processed with care.
Slide reproductions could even be proposed in exchange for art, as we learn from an entry in Kozlov’s diary from 2 April 1983 (pages 4-47, 4-48). Kozlov wrote it a couple of days before the opening of the second presentation of independent Leningrad artists "TEII” at the Palace of the Youth, Leningrad (5-20 April, 1983 more>>), while still selecting the works to he wanted to display:
/ One of the photographers suggested Timur and me to take colour slides and black and white pictures of our works in exchange for any of our works. more>>
I am inclined to think that Kozlov declined the offer to exchange slides for art, because some days later, after the opening, there is another note referring to shooting the exhibition (page 4-52):
Выставка: вся диафрагма открыта выдержка «В» ≈ 1см Графика 15:30 Д. 3.5 В.60 / Colour slides Exhibition: maximum aperture of diaphragm shutter speed “B” ≈ 1cm Work on paper 15:30 D. [диафрагма, diaphragm] 3.5 B [выдержка, shutter speed] 60 more>>
Most probably, Kozlov intended to shoot the exhibition himself – or at least to shoot his own works displayed at the exhibition. It is also likely that the values 15, 30 and 60 refer to the LOMO 135 SV shutter speeds of 1/15, 1/30, and 1/60 seconds; as mentioned above, the FED-2 has different values. Why the bulb mode “B” should correspond to approximately 1 cm I cannot say. No pictures of that exhibition are in Kozlov’s archive, neither colour nor black and white photos. Top photographers, like those working for the TASS news agency or for one of the large publishing companies, would receive a certain amount of Western film material – Fuji or Kodak – for major publications, for instant a Hermitage art book. If a photographer worked very carefully, some unexposed film material might remain, and such “surplus” pictures could be used for one’s private business. This is how Evgenij Kozlov got medium format reproductions of his own works and of his collection “2x3m”– as late as 1990. They were taken with a Fujichrome colour reversal film. Thirty years later, the quality of these images is still excellent. In fact, 1990 sees the first wave of colour photography of Kozlov’s Leningrad studio “The Russian Field“, and among those photographers was I myself.
Luckily, before 1990, some of Kozlov’s foreign friends used colour photography to document their impressions of Leningrad, and a number of such prints or scans of prints are in E-E‘s archive. When these pictures show Kozlov’s works, they are particularly interesting to me, especially when the original works are no longer available or disappeared.
next page : Chapter 5. Loading the film cartridge
© Hannelore Fobo / text / pictures / lay-out © (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov / artwork Uploaded 3 May 2021 |
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