Photographer had view of life behind Iron Curtain

Like poets and painters, photojournalists use images to tell stories. But would you call a photojournalist an “artist”? That question is answered with a rousing “Da!” when referring to Russian photographer Leonid Bergoltsev. The 87-year-old Hillyard resident, whose career spanned four decades in his native Soviet Union, is the subject of a retrospective opening at Hamilton Studio near Kendall Yards on Friday.

“Leo is an absolute treasure,” said local vintage film photographer Kathy Kostelec of Cherry Street Studios. “It’s important for Spokane to learn more about him and his work and to experience the outstanding artistry of this renowned photojournalist.”

More than 100 of Bergoltsev’s black-and-white photos will be on display at Hamilton Studio in a show titled “People Among People: Other Times, Other Places.” The pictures were plucked from the Russian émigré’s photojournalism career back when he lived in the former Soviet Union.

Bergoltsev’s influence reached its highest levels while on staff from 1958 to 1972 at Soviet Union magazine (Russia’s glossy equivalent to America’s Life magazine). A free thinker with a sparkle in his eye and humor in his frame, Bergoltsev was the fly on the wall behind the Iron Curtain.

He took candid portraits of the Communist Party’s Politburo, including Khruschev, Brezhnev and Kosygin. He photographed virtuoso Van Cliburn onstage the night he won the Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow. Rarely caught without a camera in hand, Bergoltsev captured in his lens author John Steinbeck, New York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury, French actress Simone Signoret and the Pope during their travels to the Eastern Bloc.

There wasn’t a single photo exhibition in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1991 in which Bergoltsev did not participate. His career took him all over the world: China, Russia, America, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, France and throughout the Soviet Union. He served as head of the photography section of the Moscow Committee of Graphic Artists and helped organize the USSR Union of Photographers. He had six one-man shows in Russia and seven abroad. He has shown his photographs in 300 exhibits across several countries and has won more than 40 photography prizes, medals and diplomas.

Yet Bergoltsev’s reputation as one of Russia’s pre-eminent photojournalists during the Soviet period is a well-kept secret in his adopted town of Spokane. After all, he had already retired by the time he emigrated to America in 1996. He made the move in order to join his daughter, who had married a man from Spokane. She first met the man when she and her father were being hosted for their initial visit to the states by Don and Lorna Hamilton of Hamilton Studio. Don Hamilton and Bergoltsev had met by chance more than 25 years ago while both were on shooting assignments in China.

“I remember being led into a suite of rooms at a hotel off Tiananmen Square, when it was quite hot, and finding Leo sitting in white tennis shorts with a white T-shirt, coolly smoking a cigarette,” Hamilton chuckled. “Leo just looks at me, takes a drag and says slowly in his deep voice, ‘We want to live in peace.’ ”

Bergoltsev’s weighty and deserved retrospective at Hamilton Studio is made even more compelling by its curators: Kostelec and her husband, Bill Kostelec, who also is part of Cherry Street Studios. The couple, who are local experts on vintage film photography and darkroom processes, have brought their own artistry to bear on Bergoltsev’s images.

“Ansel Adams once said, ‘The negative is the score, and the print is the performance,’ ” Hamilton said. “Bill Kostelec is a master printer who has achieved a masterful performance with Leo’s negatives. The depth Bill has brought out, and what he has found inside these negatives, is beautiful.”

One of Bergoltsev’s printed photos is of a handful of birds hovering in flight. The picture hangs next to his photo of three Ukrainian folk dancers, also caught floating in midair. The side-by-side analogy is stunning.

“To capture these dancers at that exact moment, a photographer has to have a perfect focus and high enough shutter speed to freeze it when they are jumping like that,” Bill Kostelec said. “It’s nearly impossible.”

“You can see the sharp, critical focus,” Hamilton added. “He’s twisting a lens. He’s not just pushing a button on a digital camera that locks automatically.”

“God knows I tried,” said Bergoltsev suddenly in English. He was listening to the conversation about his work and speaking to this reporter through an interpreter. Even through a translator, Bergoltsev’s humor and modesty come through.

“In this type of photography, you have to think fast because the content changes rapidly. You don’t have the luxury of thinking,” Bergoltsev said through his interpreter. “I am anticipating what will happen next, so I can react, get the shot and take it to the office so they can publish it. It’s not so difficult.”

Among the 100 photos are ordinary people doing ordinary things. A contemporary and acquaintance of famed street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, throughout his world travels, Bergoltsev photographed children, mothers, construction workers, pedestrians and bicyclists. But the framing, the context and the artistry make the pictures akin to visual poems.

There is one of a Russian police officer directing traffic in one direction while a citizen confronting the officer points in another direction. The political subtext of society disagreeing with the government meant the photo was rejected by Bergoltsev’s superiors at the magazine.

Yet the image was published all over the world at the time. Bergoltsev gave it the philosophical title “The Origin of Truth.”

Most important to Bergoltsev was to take photos of real life. “I don’t want to add my own ideas to the content,” he said through an interpreter. “As soon as people see a camera, they think they should look nicer or express how good they are with fake smiles. But for me, I want to take actual life. History.”