Valery Plotnikov: And Mikhail Sergeevich is also a grandfather...

A joint exhibition of the famous photographer and our publication “Star Families of the Interlocutor” opens.

There is no star who would not dream of getting into the lens of Valery Plotnikov. As Andrei Voznesensky accurately noted:
Aristocratism in beauty,
Not among the genealogies of the oak forests,
The carpenter's son is on the cross,
Plotnikov is a photographer and graphic artist.

The photographer has a special love with “Interlocutor” - many exclusive photographs of stars were published on the pages of our publication. At the exhibition of the famous St. Petersburg photographer, viewers will see about forty portraits of famous people in a family interior. Characters for all letters of the alphabet - from “A” to “Z”, from Boyarsky and Gorbachev to Yarmolnik and Yankovsky.

– Valery Fedorovich, you’ve probably prepared a surprise – something from your latest works...
- There are some. No one has ever seen or published a photograph of Leonid Yakubovich with his family. I filmed in my Moscow studio, which is located next to Sobesednik. The portrait turned out to be pathetic, but with a fair amount of irony. Particularly valuable to me is the St. Petersburg photograph of Andryusha Krasko with his two sons.

– Photographers are still trying to unravel the “Plotnikov phenomenon” - what equipment they use to shoot, how they arrange the light. Your portraits look like stills snatched from Sergei Parajanov’s films.
– Yes, I really have equipment that can arrange studio filming even in an open field. But I build everything myself. The way portraits were done before - in detail, calmly...


Clothes were borrowed from Zaitsev



– How do you form associations? For example, half-naked Olga Kabo in jeans leaned on a wall with a map of Russia...
– I can’t always explain the associations. But it hits! I come up with the interior myself and dress up the characters on purpose. When they were filming Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, we went shopping and borrowed various things. And ours is fashionable and stylish. No jacket and no tie.

– Now stores provide clothes for studio filming. But what was it like in the 70s and 80s? Your actresses are superbly dressed - the same Irina Miroshnichenko, the Vertinsky sisters...
– The biggest problem was what to dress the character in. At that time, basically everyone looked modest and completely unpresentable. Then my friends helped me out and gave me some things to take away. The same Slava Zaitsev.

– So Zaitsev, it seems, was in disgrace at that time?
– It was believed that Soviet people did not need all these bourgeois delights. And Zaitsev was such a bright and uncontrollable person! But for the same film festivals and grand entrances, I remember the actresses chose some of Zaitsev’s clothes. They would have been happy to even buy it all, but for some reason they were not allowed to sell it. They went to Cannes, and then brought them back and handed them over.

– Where did you film Oleg Yankovsky and his family?
– Oleg didn’t have his own estate back then. We found an empty lawn. Such a reminiscence of a quiet life - when on Sundays in the summer the whole family is together. I wanted to get more wicker furniture , but it was a problem. Back then, a very small proportion of people lived in decent apartments. Alexey Rybnikov's father or grandfather was a general, and he lived in a nice old house. Sasha Kabakov had his own interiors. But mostly we shot in the studio.

– The Mikhalkov sisters – Anna and Nadya in your portrait flaunt with a large tray of pies.
– I filmed this at Mikhalkov’s dacha in Nikolina Gora. It almost looked like a Christmas card. The pies were real. Either they baked them ourselves or the cook baked them, and then we even ate them.


I filmed Listyev in his apartment

– You look at some family portraits with bitterness. Andrey Razbash is no longer alive...
– I did two portraits with Albina Azimova. One is with Listyev, the other is with Razbash. We filmed with Vlad Listyev at their home. Then they just got an apartment and were so happy! They're finally almost done with it. Unfortunately, Vlad was shot at the entrance to this house. And with Andrey Razbash I filmed them with Albina at home. I got an American flight jacket for Andrey - he was then hosting a program about aviators “Wings” on NTV.

– Valery Fedorovich, you are a selective person. Why did you prefer Sobesednik to many other publications?
– It was “Interlocutor” who had the honor of working with me. Then he was still at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Lively, interesting. Amazing people worked here. I came to your editorial office, since the workshop was nearby. For a while they didn’t even hire me. But then they began to greet me. And I became my own “interlocutor”. They literally fed me, because the dining room here is very good. And before, they even gave us cognac at the buffet.