RARE ORIGINAL VINTAGE LISTED RUSSIAN B&W PHOTOGRAPH

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Very beautiful, symbolic and poetic, original gelatin silver print photograph by well listed master Russian photographer Nikolai Ignatiev, (1955-2004). Photograph is seated on a vintage Russian dark grey back fiber matt. Signed verso; Mockba, (meaning Moscow in Russian), dated '86, (obviously for 1986), original exhibition number of 12158, Mamaku, (a popular street in Moscow), and Nikolai in Russian. Gorgeous photograph in great condition; no apparent flaws, chips, cracks, or damage. In frame, measures approximately 11 3/4"W X 9 1/4"; vintage photo measures approximately 8 1/2"W X 6"H. Nikolai Ignatiev-Photographer of the birth of new Russia Nikolai Ignatiev was one of the foremost Russian photographers of his generation. For the last 17 years his work, mainly from the former Soviet Union, but also Asia and the Middle East, has featured in many books and some of the world's leading magazines. Nikolai Ignatiev, photographer: born Moscow 22 July 1955; married 1983 Juliet Butler (one son, two daughters); died London 15 June 2004. Nikolai Ignatiev was one of the foremost Russian photographers of his generation. For the last 17 years his work, mainly from the former Soviet Union, but also Asia and the Middle East, has featured in many books and some of the world's leading magazines. Born in 1955 in Moscow, he was raised by his father, a computer engineer, and mother, an English teacher, and went on to study as an economist, but it was his experience as a Soviet army officer in Afghanistan that perhaps provided the education that was to shape his life. Billeted in Kandahar as an army interpreter - he was fluent in Farsi - he was introduced to a world far beyond what he later described as the "concrete wasteland of Communist Moscow". As his two-year term of service neared its end in 1979 and return to Moscow loomed he decided his future lay beyond the Iron Curtain and set about planning his escape. At first he applied for political asylum at the American Cultural Centre in Kabul, only to discover that the Americans were more interested in his returning to Moscow. But Ignatiev had no desire to work as an American spy, although t would have been a certain irony: a few years before, the KGB had tried to recruit him while he studied at the Moscow Institute of International Relations. Instead he tried escaping across the border, but although he made it to the supposed safety of Pakistani territory, he was pursued and seized by Afghan border guards, then escorted to his base in Kandahar. On his return he was beaten up by his superior officers, drugged and locked in a cell. Overhearing his captors describing the charges of treason and the death sentence he would face, he attempted suicide, but was saved by prison doctors. However, the treason charges failed to materialise. His commanding officers realised that his attempted defection would reflect badly on them, and instead opted for an old Soviet favourite: Ignatiev was diagnosed as insane, and shipped back to a mental asylum in Moscow. Within two months he was released. His Afghan experiences had awakened Ignatiev's creative spirit, and it was around this time that he first took up photography, inspired by his friend and the future Magnum photographer Gueorgi Pinkhassov. Travel to the Soviet Union was still all but impossible for foreign photographers, and Ignatiev found an outlet for his work in the American news magazines hungry for images from a country on the brink of massive changes. This was also when he met his future wife Juliet Butler, an English girl working for foreign correspondents. During this Cold War era, few Russians would risk meeting Westerners, let alone marrying them, and such personal relationships were almost out of the question. But Nikolai was a maverick: in 1983 he and Juliet were married. With the coming of glasnost, he moved to the UK and in 1987 joined the agency Network Photographers, announcing that he would now be based in London, not Moscow. But this was a rash vow given the times, and he was to be proven wrong. Mikhail Gorbachev's perest... read more

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