When looking at the photos of the Ukrainian Soviet photographer Iryna Pap it is rather easy to imagine yourself in the shoes of a heroine or a hero from a black-and-white movie. It could very well be a light-hearted melodrama like Once Again About Love (1968) starring Tatiana Doronina and Alexander Lazarev. "You're the most outstanding girl in the entire USSR!" the protagonist confesses to the flight attendant Natasha. Who would not want to be called the most beautiful woman, and who would not want to be next to someone like the lead character?
We can often recognize such immaculate and romantic stories in Iryna Pap's photography.
The turbulent 60s were marked by political repression in culture and by the Space Race, but the pages of Soviet newspapers were supposed to speak of the lightness and beauty of life itself. The photographer directs her attention at the young and healthy people — healthy both in body and in spirit. Such youth and vital energy give inspiration for the future — to walk among such ideal people. Pap's photos are very cinematic as is the case with a photo of a young woman holding willow twigs in her hands while talking on the payphone. Her gaze is directed at the sky, and her smile radiates happiness. She is like a movie star — if not the Soviet Greta Garbo, then certainly Tatiana Doronina.
Wherein lies the typical ruse of cinematography? When it seems that the ultimate happiness is about to be achieved an inevitable tragedy befalls the heroes and separates them forever. The black-and-white picture still fascinates us and in spite of everything we await a happy ending even after the death of the protagonist. But where does this magic and mystique of a black-and-white come from? Is it a characteristic feature of the 60s, the time when the movie was made?
When we look at Iryna Pap's payphone girl photo we observe that not everything depicted there is ideal after all. The carefree impression of the happy Soviet life is broken by an inscription scratched on the telephone box. Such expressive inscriptions are part of graffiti culture, yet in the USSR this bourgeois tradition was not officially present even during the Perestroika years. On the contrary, the tradition of cleanliness and order was widely promoted. So where did this emotionality come from? What is this plea about? Quite possibly this was done by some unruly citizen who scratched it in protest or as a sign of carelessness, a testament to one's freedom. The inscription itself is illegible, although its existence is important to us as it signals the existence of another realm in which there was room for drama, self-expression, and freedom.
Irina Pap's personal life too was not free of drama, hardships and dilemmas hid behind the perceived success. She seemed to have flourished in the "male" profession and knew no fear. Pap was one of three women in the Soviet Union who were respected and considered equal among the professional photojournalists. In Iryna Pap's photos, we see her colleagues, opponents, and critics — in the foreground are the reporters, men wearing coats and hats, standing slenderly on both sides of the road and waiting for a perfect shot. Pap looked short among that crowd, but when it came to professional competencies they were no match for her. She had to jump above her head again and again just to prove that she, with her keen observance and talent, was no worse than any of them. The "male gaze" surrounded Pap and so she herself had to have a strong character. Her partner was the famous Soviet photographer Boris Gradov, who became a legend even during his lifetime. Gradov took pictures for various outlets in Moscow, Pap — for a publication in Kyiv. Love and work intertwined both at home and on the newspaper pages. We often observe similar plots, albeit having strikingly different author's viewpoints and, as a result, different photos. Irina Pap's personal story and life remained behind the lens. She seems to have shielded herself with a camera, which on the one hand protected her, and on the other infused her with strength.
The duality of daily Soviet life is symbolically exposed through the fact that there now exist several archives of the photographer. The first one she conducted officially (contained all that was published in the newspapers); the second one she made for herself, as if in anticipation that one day it may see the light of day (comprised of all that would have never been allowed in the Soviet press). There is also the third, personal archive that tells about the life she hid from prying eyes. Here you can see the business trips she took abroad, a display of her proximity to the contemporary political elite. She captured an alternative "happy life" — the life of socialist Europe, which in the USSR had been perceived with an idealized luster. The first archive remained in the possession of state institutions, while the second one was literally saved by Valery Miloserdov in the 1990s when he came to work as a photographer for Izvestia, the same newspaper where Pap used to work. The box that contained the photos was about to be thrown in the trash and if not for Miloserdov's impulse no one would have been able to appreciate it now. As for the third archive, it was found at the author's home.
Pap understood the power of photography. She knew which photo had a chance to be accepted by the press, and which one was better off hidden away from the public, as well as from relatives. And the reason for such internal censorship, of course, is not that the Soviet people were strangers to the bitterness of life. The fact is that for most of them the life itself was indeed happy because the post-war generation was well aware of the price of peace and sincerely rejoiced that the war and the famine were over. They still faced problems on the daily basis but chose to believe that the future would solve those as well. By looking at photos from the archives of Irina Pap, we see where the boundary between such illusions and real life used to lay. And these unpublished photos have the power to break that barrier. After all, photography is not only able to construct an image of ultimate happiness, but also to break it apart. It is much like with the Soviet black-and-white movies — we always want to think that even after the tragedy had happened there will be a happy ending.
Kateryna Iakovlenko