"Indifference was completely indifferent to her"

Terrible and unexpected news. Olga Korsunova died. Olga was life itself, death is completely incompatible with her. This cannot be. This is a stupid mistake. Death means immobility. Closure. This is not about Olga.

Openness is what attracted to Olga. She appeared, and the most callous crackers-producers softened under charm. Active, active charm: after all, life is an active form of existence. A tireless movement was immediately twisted around her: thoughts, plans, projects. All this was connected with people, with many people and relationships. Acquaintance with her immediately suggested participation. She, like no one else, could captivate and involve, the energy and dynamics of her charm acted on the most separate and the unfamiliar. The only thing she passed by was indifference. Not that she did not suffer indifference - due to openness, Olga was very tolerant - but indifference was completely indifferent to her.

Tolerance and openness are not at all equal to omnivorousness. Olga was very selective and demanding. Indifference was just alien to her, she passed him.

Olga Korsunova was born in Leningrad. Her whole life was connected with this city. Very early, in the 1970s, she already met the entire Leningrad underground: artists, poets, writers. In 1971, she got a laboratory assistant to the photo laboratory of the Higher Military School. M.V. Frunze only because she herself said that “there were fewer people in the photo laboratory than in other places where they offered me work,” but a year later she met Boris Smelyov, and this decided everything. The largest St. Petersburg photographer of the end of the 20th century, Boris Smelov did not just create a school around him - he determined the spirit of the city, and “Petersburg Smelov” will soon become as well -established mythologist as “Petersburg Gogol” or “Petersburg of Dostoevsky”.

Friendship, as Olga always had, arose instantly and for life. The next day after meeting, they went to the commission and Smelyov and bought an old “watering can” with the last money. They wandered around the city, talked endlessly and endlessly shot: a city, people, parties. They were the main photographic pair of underground St. Petersburg culture, and their photocheatus is still waiting for their publishers and researchers. This was the main thing - a strange bohemian existence in unity with St. Petersburg and in complete opposition to the USSR. In parallel, coexistence with the requirements of socialist reality was carried out: the criminal prosecution for parasitism threatened everyone who did not have an official place of work, and Olga worked as a photographer in the Hermitage, then in the Youth Theater. Olga hated Soviet officialdom, like any officialdom. Having married archaeologist Kirill Lagotsky, she left in 1981 from Leningrad to the village on Lake Ladoga. The archaeologist began to work on a pilram, a photographer - a calf: an act in the best traditions of the Russian intelligentsia. She worked as a calf for nine years, and an extensive economy was also instituted in the house: horse, goats, hens, geese, rabbits, raccoons, hunting dogs. At the same time, Olga organized a photograph for local children. So everything was boiling for sixteen years, but her children have grown up, and Olga is returning-now in St. Petersburg, and not to Leningrad.

In 1998, Boris Smelov died. His death was a terrible shock. In many ways, because of her, Olga took a camera less and less, compensating for this by violent activities to arrange other photographers: exhibitions, seminars, schools. The dry transfer of her work is impressive, but does not convey the significance of what she managed to do. From 1998 to 2002, she worked in the State Center for Contemporary Art, from 2002 to 2005 - in the State Center for photography, overseeing various projects and leading the Baltic Photo -School. In 2005, Olga became one of the organizers of the fund and school of photographs of Petersburg Photo Masters.

In 2006, she essentially created a “photodePartist”, which immediately became one of the main centers of creative photography in the city. Since 1998, she had a nine personal photographs, and as a curator she organized even more than four dozen exhibitions, and among them-a large retrospective of Boris Smelov in the Hermitage, which she was proud of and which was unlikely to be possible without Olga.

Today's photographic life of St. Petersburg was largely defined and formed by Olga Korsunova as a curator of photographic projects and the organizer of new forms of photographic education. As an artist, she has a unique photo archive of portraits of representatives of the Leningrad underground of the 1970s.

Olga's influence on St. Petersburg photography and St. Petersburg life was huge. Everything she did was always very genuine and very necessary. With the fact that she is no longer there, not to come to terms in any way.