"Unsuccessful pale photos"

“Something new arises from chaos only,” said the hermit Miroslav Tikhiy , a photographer who secretly filming the girls living in the Moravian village of Kiyov. In the quiet and photographing in the Hutsulsky village of Krivorivnya Paraska Paletka-Goryzvit, you can find common. Both the quiet and the gang-ghoryzvit did not accept the coming to power of the Communists, lived separately and chose photographs for photographs in their native villages and their environs. The evidence they left, of course, give a very different picture of the place and time, but nevertheless they capture the viewer.

If today many know about the quiet and his photographs thanks to exhibitions around the world, then an impressive photographic archive of the folk artist Paraska Paletka-ghostyzvit only now, after a painstaking restoration, becomes affordable fans of photography. This became possible thanks to the three Kyivians who discovered it. The artist Inga Levy, the film operator Maxim Rudenko and Ekaterina Buccetskaya found an archive a few years ago during the trip, when they decided to visit the Hutsul village of Krivorivnia, where many Ukrainian poets and writers stayed and lived, and Sergey Parajanov shot "the shadow of forgotten ancestors."

Photos of Paraska Palette-Goryzvit

-You were one of those who found the archive of photographs of Paraska Paletka-Goryzvit, how did this happen?

“This is a really interesting story,” says Inga Levy . - The fact is that Krivoriva in my life appeared according to the stories of friends. And quite by accident, literally a month later, I was offered to go there a movie operator Maxim Rudenko and his wife. We went to the Paraska museum of Palette-Goryzvit, because they told me about it before. She was known to me as a folk artist, poet, folklorist and philosopher. But no one said that she is a photographer, that she has a lot of pictures. On this side, only the fellow villagers knew her.

Paraska Palette Goryatsvit

- And how did you find a box with photos, because she was under a bed in a museum?

- Yes, it's true. The fact is that Maxim, whose eye is outlined, immediately saw pictures that were modestly lying in a box on the table. And he asked: "There are photographs, printed. So, probably, there are negatives somewhere." And the keeper of the museum Vasilina said that yes, indeed, there was, I looked a little and found a part. They were in a package with the inscription "unsuccessful photographs, pale." And we looked. And at first glance it seemed that there was something interesting. We asked to look more. And after that, Vasilina found much more - already films. They really were under the bed. They lay there for a very long time: in the summer and winter, probably for many years, and this all left the imprint on them. As a result, a joint act of the work of time and man, a photographer was obtained. Restoration removed minimal obstacles, and large spots, very artistic, were left. Some photos with these spots make up a single artistic whole.

Children in Krivorivna

- How much did you manage to find photos and what will their further fate be?

- It is very approximately we are talking about 4 thousand pictures. They are now stored in Kyiv: cleaned, fixed so that they no longer destroy. Everything that we found is already scanned. The whole archive belongs and will belong to the rural community, and our group, which is called the initiative group in preserving the photo archive Paraska Paletka-Goryatsvit, will systematize the photo archive and popularization, that is, exhibitions. The photographer Natalka Dovga, who joined the group, helps us with this.

- Four thousand photographs are a rather large archive. What is depicted on them, in what period did they arise?

-As far as we understood, Paraska Paletka-Goryzvit began to shoot in the 70s. She then got the first camera. And she shot, I am not sure that until the end of her life, but for a very long time - for more than 30 years. All this time she lived in the same place - in her hut in the village of Krivorivnia. Therefore, she shot landscapes, portraits of people and holidays. It turned out such a complex retrospective of the life of this place. In the photographs, you can trace how the same people appear on them at different times: first a girl, then she is an adult woman, then she and her children. And it especially seems interesting to me that the ghostyzvit Paletka has a lot of pictures, for example, Easter. This is a whole genre. She removes Easter from year to year. To trace where a year is quite difficult. The only thing that can be seen is that one year was the sun, and the other was raining. When sunny weather, everything is in Hutsul folk costumes, and when it rains, Soviet umbrellas, Soviet raincoats, and other clothes are visible. And this number of people with Easter baskets are simply endless. He reaches for eternity from year to year. This is, as it seems to me, what can be tracked in her pictures.

Easter in Krivorivna

- In addition to this portrait of time and place, why are these photos interesting? Why did you become interested in them, decided to save them? Or is it just an accident?

- At first we thought for a long time how artistic it was. When we scanned the films and examined the photos, we realized that there really was something in them. Even if it's just a portrait, some fixation. But in addition to the undeniable quality of analog photograph, in addition to fixing, there is also that people before her camera seem to pose for eternity. In the 70s of the twentieth century, it is strange and surprising in the 70s of the twentieth century.

- You mean that it seems that people have never seen cameras, have not been photographed before?

- No, I think they took pictures. On her film, I saw pictures that were taken by chance by another person. And this is completely different. These are random photos. And she has no accident. She is very pedantic in a sense. And it seems to me, as an artist, she fixes the eternal in people, in landscapes, in everything. This is the center of her thoughts, attitude. This is a very valuable quality of the artist and his works.

- You said that Paraska Palette is better known as a folklore artist, as a writer and even a philosopher, tell us what is known about her life? ”

- Paraska Palette was born in 1927 in the family of a blacksmith Stefan and an embroiderer Anna by the name of Paletka. Very early, in my opinion, she was 16 years old, she went to Germany ... They write that she went there, wanting to study at the university, but most likely she went there still as a migrant worker. Then she managed to return home, and she began to help the Ukrainian rebel army - she was a coherent "swallow". After the war, she was sent to the camps for this: she spent 10 years in Kazakhstan. Upon returning, she tried to integrate into society again, although she was not accepted simply because she was a prisoner of the Gulag. People were afraid. And just with the help of photographs (she photographed people and handed out pictures to them) she managed to win the respect of her fellow villagers. She vowed to praise God's world, and she did it - she painted the icon. She wrote several poetic collections, was engaged in folklorism, intertwined her books and gave them to people. She is known mainly as an artist and as a poet.

A friend of the photographer Theodososi, who also spent several years in the camps of the Gulag

- And what is in her museum today?

- The museum is her hut in which she lived. She is small. Part of her work was collected there, the second part is located in the museums of Ivan Franco in Krivorivna, Verkhovins and several more museums in Ukraine. The hut, in general, is not in the best condition, the locals repair it on their own. From weather conditions and from the fact that they do not live in the house, and holes appear in the walls. Although, oddly enough, there is not so damp there: the paintings that are stored in the museum are in good condition. Vasilina, the Keeper, is trying to systematize the archive of books available here, intertwined by the Horyzvit cap. The wife of a local priest - Oksana Rykruk, who does a lot with her husband for the museum - gains texts. In general, the work is constantly going on and, I hope, the museum will gain some status that will help it retain.

-In modern Ukraine, the works of Paletka-Goryzvit were published? You say that the work continues not only on a photographic archive, but also text.

- Several books came out, and she wrote prose and poetry in the Hutsul dialect. She printed on a typewriter and manually wrote in different colors with handles, even, as I noticed, putting some meaning in the color of the ball. Her poetry is mainly religious, and prose is different. There are even works about India with her own illustrations. She was passionate about Indian culture. Mahatma Gandhi was an authority for her. She read and wrote a lot about him. Her memories, a description of the holy Christmas era in the village of Krivorivnia were published. The set of its texts is engaged in both Krivorivna itself, and, for example, the center of Les Kurbas.

From left to right: Maxim Rudenko, Ekaterina Buccetskaya and Inga Levy