Grinberg Alexander

History of Russian pictorial photography has not yet written, but when that becomes available, a place of honor in it will take creativity Alexander Danilovich Greenberg (1885-1979), a wonderful man of destiny, Russian classics of photography.

. He lived a long, . full of dramatic events of life - almost a whole century! Born in the reign of Alexander III Peacemaker, . became eminent photographers at the very beginning of the century, . Nicholas II, . fought in the First World, . spent several years in captivity germanskom,
. In the civil war was on the side of the red. In the 20 th and first half of the 30-ies actively worked as a photographer and a cameraman. In the year of great change (1929) was subjected to sharp ideological elaboration of the petty-bourgeois artistic positions.

In 1935 he was among the twenty participants' Exhibitions masters of Soviet photography, and a year later - in one of the camps of the Gulag. Miraculously escaped to freedom on the eve of World War II and for a long time wore the stamp of former prisoners ". During the war years did not leave Moscow, earning a living shooting portraits. He survived the struggle with cosmopolitanism, was rehabilitated in the Khrushchev thaw, there was a modest pension at time of Brezhnev. In short, tested with dashing all that befell his generation. In a photographic career, Alexander Grinberg joined the heyday of Russian fotopiktorializma. Then flashed the names of Nikolai Petrov, Sergey Lobovikov, Anatoly Trapani, Sergey Savrasov. Greenberg perfectly mastered the technique of noble press, allowing the transfer of the portraits of shades of mood, in the landscapes - the fleeting impressions of nature. Contemporaries of his work struck a virtuoso performance. These pictures perfectly fit the style of Art Nouveau plexus. The figure in the portraits are flattened, a line of exquisite melody of singing, modeling forms. In landscape photographs subjects dissolved in the haze environment, and free composition viewers tune in lyrical note. Painting style helped made poetry nature, awakened dreams of a beautiful world, which drew the everyday reality, and ornamental and decorative concluded photographic images in the frame of Art. The young Greenberg was an active supporter and promoter of an oil processing fingerprints (bromoyl, gum arabic, rezinotipiya). The development of his creative principles influenced by the close proximity to the practice of cinema and the work of renowned cinematographer studios. He said here a remarkable craftsman, almost ten years (since 1922) held the chair of filming in Gostehnikume Cinematography (future VGIK), trained many students.

. By the mid 30-ies Greenberg refuses romoyley and concludes: creativity in photography can express themselves without complex image processing
. It formulates the idea of "pure photography" (an expression belongs to him), and introduces the concept in everyday life. This idea matured earlier, at the time work on the photographic incarnation of "art movement". Then, in the mid 20-ies, at the State Academy of Artistic Sciences was established Fotokabinet, around which were grouped old-school photographers, among them Greenberg. Before them stood the task - using photos to create a transcription of motion in dance. Interest in this problem was connected with the arrival in the USSR, the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan with her free dance school. Portfolio Photographers on display "The Art of Movement", there have been four. Exhibited there, and Greenberg's photographs - nude. Here he has reached perfection, and, perhaps, had no rivals in terms of the ideal female image. The pictures are full of languor Greenberg's model, they are a promise of bliss and heavenly love. They are no fatal passion, spirituality is not opposed to corporal, but is in harmony with. The harmony of these principles has absorbed most of the wizard, and because of his female characters so plethoric. The results of the twenty-year masters were represented at the famous exhibition "The Soviet photography for 10 years - 51 shot. Authority Greenberg at the time was so high that he, together with well-known artists included in the jury of the exhibition. When in 1929 began the rout of the old photographic school in the list of those whose works have been labeled "decadent", "socio-impotent", stood and addressed Greenberg. Especially got "beautiful, useless females". The conclusion, of course, was made: eroticism, which feeds the sources of rich, satiated idleness, Soviet art of not-to-face. "The public, the public picture, - said the article" the "rights" of influence in the photos "- should once and for all terminate your access to its exhibitions, in their shop windows in their print this dirty survival of capitalist relations."

. Still, Greenberg ventured once more to put sketches of the naked body at an exhibition in 1935, to discuss which daredevils encouraged to learn from the masters of culture photos
. In fact, for photographic culture, he was arrested (although he was charged with distribution of pornography) and sentenced special meeting of the NKVD.

History, however, thought otherwise. Gone into oblivion detractors Greenberg forgotten fierce criticism Photographers-pictorialists, now their work exposes Tretyakov Gallery. With creativity Alexandra Greenberg meets photographic capital of Europe - in Paris, held a personal exhibition of the Master.

Valery Stigneev