Do not become Grigory Mikhailovich Chudakov

[Tamila]

Unfortunate news. He was a man whom I admired.
It was always interesting to listen to his stories about Russian photography, from a direct participant in the events. In recent years he has taught not only at MSU, but in our IZHLT (Institute of Journalism and creative writing). His lectures were held in a "studio apartment" on Smolensk Square, it was a rarity apartment, the walls hung photographs of the first (and only) the names of Russian photography, everywhere there were albums, books .. He sat in his chair constantly, and we (students) - on sofas, armchairs, chairs, all sitting around the coffee table on which were pictures, and we all learned visually, discussed, argued and admired.
It is a pity. The fond memory.

Died Gregory M. Chudakov (23 October 1926-14 November 2011). Executive secretary, deputy. main, and then long-term (and the last in the history of the magazine) editor in chief of "Soviet Photo". When it became known magazine "Photo", his eyes poured out of the USSR, not built a new Russia, we dream about, and a magazine with which he was, where he lived for thirty years, ceased to exist. In the early 1990's "Photograph" (as the picture itself) was not needed. But this man, connecting to the wisdom and knowledge of the court fox turtles, continued to work, wrote and taught. For the past twenty years (think about it, almost as much as passed in the most active struggle for survival, for publication in the fight against the pro-and contra-) he was not a significant figure in photography, it is not shown on television, not print interview with him on a the basement. But he was. As a umpire, whose opinion resorted to in extreme cases, but when it is such a time, go for it.

 He maintained links between the generations in photography, between history and the present day photos of the very fact of his being. There was - and so defended. There was - and so testified. Because he, and no one else has made their first joint (another Soviet-American) comparative publish photos from World War II, he knew about all the exhibitions and the history of photography books published and scattered, and not waiting in the reification of circulation of the Soviet era. He kept in his mind a lot of intrigue, brilliant, like chess games, without understanding the logic of which it is impossible to explain the appearance of a publication in the journal "Soviet Photo", it is impossible to explain photographic breakthroughs and approvals for publications and exhibitions that began to show in Moscow from from the mid-1980s. He was not a clear leader, but he was a member of the photographic event, made possible by perestroika and glasnost, the very event by which political currents of the second half of the 1980s - comes from Russia today - found visual evidence in the photos. New picture in our country came to the viewer, thanks to glasnost, and the same picture made transparency a real factor in changing society; photography gave evidence that it can no longer continue as it was. Eccentrics not a revolutionary. Rather, an evolutionist of his convictions. He until recently taught at the Moscow State University in journalism, in the old school and conservative, but that conservatism - as a shell preservation of tradition and as a platform to create continuity - he valued in school. Let one of hundreds of his students was able to realize who and what he communicates during interviews Chudakov in his studio with views of Moscow, it was the anchor of preserving the historical reality of the photo.

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M. Gregory was an expert, politician, teacher, ladies' man, a dandy. Eighty years he was able to appear in public with colored handkerchief in his lapel and kissing ladies hands photographic, whispering compliments in your ear as if the photo - Versailles, and the tired aunt photographs of these photographers, he was able to hear the news and send them so cleverly that no one interlocutor is not a feeling of gossip. He knew how to combine the individual strings in harmonious sequence of facts, made friends with white and black, and no one tried. He survived the struggle with cosmopolitanism and the persecution of the fifth paragraph in an age when the young man seems to him that all roads are open, especially if they're any good (and Chudakov was a talented person), then - after twenty years - the years of struggle for the right leaving the country for many - he was again in the situation on the verge of loss, but at the risk of much more - many years of experience, an interesting job in an area where few places, and professionals in the enumeration, but, as was in Soviet times, all must be ideologically tested frames. Eccentrics held in a needle's eye, he continued to work in the "Soviet Photo", and it's not that the photo was the harbor, where they could escape from the political storms of internal Soviet politics, he just simply ran the ship of their own destiny. And then, in the eighties, just took over the helm chief editor of "Soviet Photo" magazine and not crumbled in the late 1980s, did not close in 1991, barely exceeded shestidesyatipyatiletie reason, renaming, and sank early as 1994, with new name (maybe it was a metaphysical mistake that hastened the end?) One of the most terrible events in the history of national photography was a fire in the magazine that occurred in the early 1990s. After this knowledge, memory, Chudakov were sometimes the only source of events, the materials which were stored in the annals of the journal, or simply a place for him.

In 1990, Grigory Mikhailovich was an active participant in the photographic medium, at the time the threshold of the Internet, where personal contact and presence at trade shows and get-togethers was a way to create an environment, preservation of its bonds. He knew the old and new, carefully watching what was happening, was interviewed, was interested in the young. Waves updates in the 2000s were demolished on all his fame in the direction of the main ways the media, somehow covering the photographic life in the country, but for professionals working in photography long or deep (which, incidentally, are often the same), it credibility and value were indisputable.

Passed away one of the last of the Mohicans photos, the one that was in our country in the twentieth century.

Irina Chmyreva
http://www.photographer.ru/cult/person/5368.htm

P.S. Gregory M. has told me that once interviewed the photographer Peter Otsup, who made the famous image of "Lenin read the truth." And by the way it was a random shot. While the photographer has exhibited light, Lenin read a newspaper, and it was a test shot.