Wedding as a spell

The monologue of the photographer Tsuker immediately before entering the hell

The peculiarity of the emotional and moral geography of Russia is mainly that it is on its territory, or rather, in the city of Bryansk, there is an entrance to hell. The exit from hell, respectively, is located in Chelyabinsk, in the local Mausoleum of Lenin. If you have ever seen him, then you yourself know-the door there is locked all the time. However, it is easy to guess that when it is necessary-in difficult or dashing eras and centuries, the door open and release the sad population of Russia, which is missing for its happiness, and it wanders then, swearing cheerfully, along the alley of the heroes of the heroes all overly our planet, rotating in the darkness of times. But this, of course, is a separate, and maybe a completely unnecessary conversation, so we will put it on another, more suitable for the occasion of once. In the meantime, we will return to Bryansk, or even to Bryansk, in order to give this strange and to death to anyone, so to speak, the breadth of our immortal and also unnecessary soul.

It is not possible to find the entrance to hell yourself. Most likely, you can get there on a minibus along with passengers, harsh and silent so much that it seems as if with their bags and carts they go on their last journey along route No. 43 “School No. 61 - the Kurgan of Immortality”. But in Russia, it is customary to guess about life and death, if you don’t know exactly at what point to tell the minibus driver the main repentant phrase of the whole human life: “Take a stop, please.”

So the entrance to the hell may be somewhere in the Lower Judge ravine or in the central market under the protection of trading by geese from the wing radio.

And even right in the local museum of local history in the dark depths of the Diarama, “The Boar leaving the Forest”, but it is unlikely that anyone in Bryansk will help to deal with this.

Here, in general, no one talks a lot and never jokes. All things here are called severe and only their names. The shopping center is “taxiopark” because it was built on the site of the taxi fleet. The residential area is a “plane”, since it is behind a monument in the form of an airplane of the Great Patriotic War. It is not surprising that any person who accidentally or ahead of time has fallen into this mystical space due to unnecessary curiosity or due to the devilish tourist science, quickly turns into Bryansk into a ball, and they are decorated with city squares, squares and a front staircase leading to the embankment gums.

In general, in order to cope with the proximity of the underworld, in Bryansk there are only two proven places: a forest in which the Greenhouse mushrooms and the registry office grow. In this sense, a real savior of mankind can be considered a Bryansk photographer, known here as a tsucker. Tsucker, who at one time, received the formation of a forester, spent his entire conscious life actually at the very entrance to Hell. With the camera in his hands, he had to be present with the most grave misconceptions of mortals and nevertheless take photographs that forever leave people happy, serene and alive.

Tsucker took off the matinees in kindergartens. He kept his own photo studio almost in the police department, where

Drunk women with pineapple came to him, who said:

- My name is Cleo. Take off me like that! Today I want to be impudent and wealthy!

And, of course, Tsucker always photographed a wedding - the main ritual of Bryansk life, which allows you to forget about the proximity of hell on one amazing day. Tsucker generally considers weddings a strong and effective spell. And, despite the fact that over the years the wedding ritual is changing, the spell itself still needs to be pronounced correctly. This is what Tsucker himself says about this:

“The first wedding that I was shooting was the wedding of my very close friend. It was the 92nd year. Her groom was a handsome man, a musician, a singer, a karate, son of the mayor of Clines. By that time, I only shot a kindergarten. At first I just walked the streets, saw people with children and said: "Can I take your child?" - They told me: "Why?" - I answered: "If you like it, you will buy a photo." And everyone bought. I earned forty rubles a month, for the student it was very cool. And then Olka decided to get married. The steam was prohibitively beautiful. Such that it is painful to look at the eyes. Well, what to do? We went to Klintsy.

It was then a little depressed town. We went first to act “on the tank”. This was called "Riding on Monuments", a mandatory ritual. In Bryansk, for example, all weddings went “to the monument to drivers”, it is twenty kilometers from the city. They came, put flowers, stood, left. This was an important point, it disappeared only about the age of about a year ago, when the young people had a photo shoot. And then we went "to the tank." Then to the registry office and in the dining room - to celebrate. The dining room on this occasion was closed, because local alcoholics were giggled there. They came and said: well, pour us, what are you? And at this time there, at the wedding, he sat a very small, very thawed man, dressed in some kind of clift, and silently drank vodka. He nodded to everyone, smiled and was a little somehow alone.

And when the alcoholics began to knock, he got up, went up to them and said: "Silent." And they immediately left. I asked: "Who is this?" - Olka says to me: "This is my mother -in -law's brother, authority hook."

The authority of the hook was a legendary person. Then he was shot from a machine gun. The motorcyclist drove up to the car and shot. And before that, legends were told about the hook. He was a former paratrooper, without a family, such an independent, adequate man. They had a street, a local Rublevka there, in their Klintsy, rich people lived on it. The hook along this street went somewhere all the time. And rich people began to lower the dogs on him: they did not know him in the face, they thought, some kind of homeless man was walking. And when the dogs jumped out, the hook wound his jacket on his hand, put her dog into his mouth, beat her in the nose and killed her. And when he killed five or six dogs there, they stopped releasing dogs. Apparently, the freedom of movement of citizens was a fundamentally important problem for the hook. Such people probably no longer do.

But taking pictures of children, of course, is cooler. Children are funny, funnier. You showed them the language, they laugh.

And at such a wedding, of course, you have to work hard. You have been learning to look for your angle for a long time. When you are just starting to understand the logic of the wedding, you do not know how to be. Well, for example, you come to the Armenians. They have a problem: they are Armenians. Therefore, they become around the bride and begin to sing their songs. Armenians have only two songs: funny and sad. Tra-Ta-Ta and Ta-Ta-R-Ta. And they are under these songs - the whole wedding - around the bride spin. And you do not know how to shoot this bride, how to get to her at all. Or another trouble. You come with the Armenians “on the monument”: they have a grave of the Armenian general, who died during the war. And they all have to take a picture there, everything: one at a time, and two, and three.

You ask: “Well, why?! You have already starred. ” They say: "So it is necessary, take it off."

Or here are the Baptists. The trouble is with them. They are a little so American, and in their heads there is a difficult imposition of an American on Russian. Organize the abduction of the bride with the help of a collection, all witnesses are in pink. And then they have a feast.

At the Russian wedding there is a real Bukhalovo, and the Baptists have a cute non -alcoholic feast. This is such a huge amateur performances. It’s simply impossible to shoot. In terms of the number of syrup, this is something beyond, and in terms of talents, this is very bad.

They have what kind of songs: “The Lord comes, he is saving us all, Anya-tie, tra-tie-t-tie.” And then the rock band: “J-jj-j, aaaaaa, here will come, Dzhe, he will save, Jzhzhzh, aaaaa.” Therefore, I do not go to the Baptists for a feast, I shoot everything that is before him. True, they relate with understanding, they say: “Well, yes, you don’t need a feast, you will be bad there.” Terribly cute, I love them very much. Everything is like a prudent.

So, when you go through all this over the years, you understand that over time you develop intuition. I somehow had a personal record: I shot 52 weddings in a year. Then I could wake me up and say: "Zucker, wedding!" And I wouldn’t even open my eyes, I would take it by ear, without waking up. I knew all the canons.

What canons are these. First dressing the bride. It takes a lot of time. Personnel turns out two or three, but it is necessary to shoot. It is necessary to come at six in the morning and shoot. Because a Russian person hates when they look at him point blank. The body tells him: Give this villain in the snout. And you definitely need to come close. And then the bride is cut, combed, smear, and you are approaching. The bride first says: remove him from here, he is a sick. And then he stops paying attention to you, and this is fundamentally important for a Russian wedding. Otherwise, then everything will go awry, because the body of Russian people will resist you. So you are approaching and telling some funny story to reassure everyone.

My favorite story is about the groom who disappeared. I somehow shot a wedding in new buildings, far. There were no mobile phones then. And at twelve o'clock guests come to buy the bride. Around the balls. Everyone is waiting for Lech. Lech is the groom. He went with a witness for a bouquet, now they will be. We stand, wait. No Lech. We call him home. Lech is at home? No, he has already left for half an hour. We stand on the street, the courtyard. The bride has cognac. An hour passes. No Lech. The bride’s mother calls the hospitals. There, Lehi also did not see. We are standing, forty people. Everyone is very awkward. Everyone drinks. Through three more hours. The car arrives at four. Lech with flowers and Witness Seryoga comes out of it. Everyone says: "Hello, Lesha." And he, as bewitched, replies: "Hello." - "Where were you?" -“Well ... we went for flowers to the file from the second Bryansk, we arrived, and Seryoga says: some kind of bouquet of shit. I say, I know good people on the campaign, they will make us a normal bouquet. We go to the campaign, we take a bouquet, and then Seryoga says: something you have some shit, how will you marry it? Let's go to the boom. We went into the boom, there is no tie. Then we went back to the second Bryansk, to the store. We bought a normal tie. "

Well, that is, from the horror that we need to marry, Lech and Serega lost consciousness, the time in their head stopped. The bride asks: "Will you marry something?" Lech says: "So I brought a bouquet, I bought a tie, so I need to get married." And the registry office is up to five. We call there and ask: "Marry?" - "Yes." And then Lech woke up, came to life, we managed everywhere, everything turned out well. And when I say this, any bride laughs, and I make my own frame.

After dressing the bride, her ransom occurs. Some grooms simply hate the ransom. They are even ready to truly fight with aunts from Chelyabinsk, who really like this ritual.

Now, thank God, the struggle against ransom has led us all to modern weddings, when people do only what they want. And this is perfect. Because the ransom is always painful. I remember only one best ransom in my life. Once I shot the wedding of an absolute Jew with an absolute Russian. Curly funny people from Moscow arrived on cars worth a whole house. They asked: “How much money do you need to ransom? One hundred rubles?! Yes, hell to you. You won’t get a penny from us. ” That was really cool, I still remember.

After ransom, everyone goes to the registry office. This is a separate story. There is a special aunt, it is immortal. Of course, there are several of them there, but for me she is always alone. She is in a plush dress, maybe such aunts are born in them or they are grown somewhere in advance, dressed, and then selected as Swiss guards to the Vatican. This aunt has one weapon - diction. She says in this terrible special tone: "Dear young." I hear this phrase even in a dream. Moreover, I used to think that it was only in Bryansk, but then it turned out that the same aunt was in the whole country. She has very bad humor. For example, several years ago there was such a case. A very cheerful groom to the question "Do you agree?" He answered: "Well, I'll think more." The aunt calmly told him: “Well, think, come next week.” And did not paint them.

But if it was possible to go through the aunt, then it was customary to thump directly at the registry office. It was holy. Now times have changed, and are not allowed. And before, there was a special rope, all filled with champagne, sticky, it was impossible to wash it, the ceilings were pierced with traffic jams. At this point, someone was always drunk, some witness. They tried to either beat him, or drive him away, but he did not understand that this was not his holiday. Then he was put in a taxi and taken away. Once even a bride was taken away.

It was an interesting wedding. The story is: the bride bit the tick. She was told, they say, you will die a year later in two. Then she decided to get married. And with joy, she drank so that she was loaded in a taxi, her leg stuck out of the window in a shoe, she was removed, thrown into the salon, and the groom continued to celebrate. Thank God how many years have passed, and she is still alive, feels great. Maybe this whole story saved her, who knows him.

There is a lot of magical in the wedding. This is the biting of bread that is specially ordered at the bakery and which is impossible to break off. Throwing glasses on the floor over the shoulder. The first dance. Tears. Well, of course, the host, paid by parents. This is such a special woman with a sixth size and a chala on her head. She jokes and reads terrible poems. I am now holding my cafe in Bryansk, a beer-confectionery "Sunday Dad". I have an announcement there: "Do not smoke, do not read poetry." I generally think that poets are a terrible, unacceptable essence. You can never know what to expect from them.

Maybe because of them everything has changed in the world, including weddings. The place of photographers is now occupied by the bride’s girlfriends. They buy a camera for themselves, and then get involved in the profession.

They are good girls, but all that they shoot, they spied somewhere. There was little people in the world who want to do something of their own in it. The quality of life becomes cooler and steeper, but it becomes more boring and boring to live.

Stories are not too interesting. This can be seen from the current personnel from weddings: somewhere the reinforcement and simplicity disappeared. Maybe I’m just grumbling in an old manner, but it seems to me that now everything is already solving not love, but trends.

But still, the wedding, thank God, still remains. Like hope for happiness, as an attempt to energize reality. Let this witchcraft not work. I gave my shooting to mothers several times, because the groom and the bride have already divorced this moment. But the attempt itself is important. Through it, a chance is given to at least try to understand that life can only be enchanted by enchanting yourself. This is a great internal work. So you drank, drooped, kissed, woke up in the morning after the wedding - around ten bottles of unfinished champagne and salad. And we must somehow live with it, but it's hard. This is hell if you have hell inside. And in order not to get into it, you can only change yourself. ”

Probably, there is nothing more to add to what was said. In addition to, of course, the name of Tsuker. But you will inevitably recognize him yourself. When the time comes when you arrive in Bryansk.