Alexander Greenberg Biography

Photographer Alexander Greenberg photographer Alexander Greenberg The History of Russian Pictorial Photography has not yet been written, but when it will be, the work of Alexander Danilovich Greenberg will take an honorable place in it -, a person of an amazing fate, a classic of a Russian light. He lived a long, full of dramatic events - for a whole century for a nearby! Born in the reign of Alexander III Peacemaker, became an eminent photographer at the very beginning of the century, under Nicholas II, fought in the First World War, spent several years in the German captivity.

In the Civil War, he was on the side of the Reds. In E and the first half of the years, he actively worked as a photographer and a movie operator. In the year of the Great Fracture, he was acute ideological study for the petty -bourgeoisness of the artistic position. In the year, he is among the twenty participants of the “Exhibition of Masters of the Soviet Photography”, and a year later in one of the camps of the Gulag.

Miraculously broke free on the eve of the Patriotic War and for a long time wore the stigma of the "former in prison." In the war years, he did not leave Moscow, earning a living by shooting portraits. He survived the struggle with cosmopolitanism, was rehabilitated in the Khrushchev thaw, and existed for a modest pension in the Brezhnevskoy season. In a word, I experienced with dashing everything that fell to its generation.

Alexander Greenberg entered the photographic field at the time of the heyday of Russian photopictorialism. Greenberg perfectly mastered the technique of a noble press, which allowed to convey in portraits the shades of mood, in landscapes - fleeting impressions of nature. Contemporaries of his work were struck by the virtuosity of performance. These photos fit perfectly into the style of the Art Nouveau.

The figure in portraits was flattened, the line sang an exquisite melody, modeling forms. In landscape pictures, objects were dissolved in the haze of Wednesdays, and the free composition tuned the viewer in a lyrical? The picturesque manner helped to omit the nature of nature, aroused the dreams of a beautiful world in which it turned ordinary reality, and ornamental and decorativeness included photographic images in the art frame.

Young Greenberg became an active supporter and propagandist of oil processing bromulus, hummiarabic, and rubber. The development of his creative principles was influenced by the close proximity to the practice of cinema and the work of a movie operator at famous film studios. Here he declared himself a remarkable master, for almost ten years from the year he occupied the department of filming in the Gostekhnikum of cinematography the future VGIK, and raised many students.

By the middle of the xs, Greenberg refuses bromuli and comes to the conclusion: creative beginning in photography can express himself without difficult processing of the picture. He formulates the idea of ​​a “pure photograph”, the expression belongs to him and introduces the concept into everyday life. This idea matured even earlier, at the time of work on the photographic embodiment of the "art of movement." Then, in the middle of the x, at the State Academy of Art Sciences, a photo book was created, around which the photo artists of the old school were grouped, and among them Greenberg.

They had the task - using a photograph to create a transcription of movement in a dance. Interest in this problem was connected with the arrival of the famous American dancer of Isadora Duncan with her free dance school in the USSR. The works of photo artists were shown at the exhibitions of "The Art of Movement", there were four of them in total. Greenberg photographs were also exhibited there - naked nature.

Here he reached perfection and, perhaps, had no rivals in the expression of an ideal female image. In the pictures of Greenberg, the models are full of Istoma, they are as a promise of bliss and unearthly love. There is no fatal passion in them, the spiritual does not confront bodily, but is in harmony with it. The harmony of these began most of all occupied the masters, and therefore his female images are so full -blooded.

The results of the twenty -year work of the master were presented at the famous exhibition "Soviet photography for 10 years" - 51 pictures. The authority of Greenberg was so high at that time that he, along with the most famous artists, entered the jury of the exhibition. When in the year the defeat of the old photographic school began, in the list of those whose works received the labels “decadent”, “socio-impotent” stood the name of Greenberg.

Especially went to "beautiful, useless females." The conclusion, of course, was made: eroticism, which feeds on the origins of a rich, saturated idleness, to Soviet art is not to the face. Nevertheless, Grinberg took a chance to once again set the sketches of a naked body at the exhibition of the year, at the discussion of which daredevils called to study with a master of photographs.

History, however, reasoned differently. Greenberg's huts have gone into oblivion, fierce critics of photo artists-pectorials are forgotten, and the Tretyakov Gallery is now being put up by their work. The photographic capital of Europe gets acquainted with the work of Alexander Greenberg - a personal exhibition of the master was held in Paris.

Valery Stigneev.