I wanted you to love these people.
Author: Andrey Filimonov
On March 28, American photographer Nathan Farb died in New York. He was the author of the photo album "The Russians," first published in Germany in 1980. The album consisted of portraits taken in Novosibirsk for the "Photography USA" exhibition. Farb worked with a Polaroid camera, which produced instant photographs that left a lasting impression on Siberians uninitiated by Western technology. The rolls of film containing the portraits were smuggled out of the USSR via diplomatic pouches. The KGB tried but failed to prevent this. Upon returning home, Farb organized the "Russians" exhibition in New York under the motto: "I want you to love these people."
From the very beginning, I tried to avoid the clichés common among American journalists writing about Russia. Back then, we thought of people on the other side of the Iron Curtain as zombies, "homo sovieticus," who were all making missiles and dreaming of wiping the West off the face of the earth. I wanted to show my characters as they really were. In my view, they weren't much different from Midwestern Americans. Or even at all. That's why Novosibirsk, located in the center of Russia, was especially interesting to me. saw an isolated world, far from Moscow. And so In the US, Midwesterners live in their own world, far removed from New York or Los Angeles, and often don't resemble the stereotypical American at all, Nathan Farb told the author of these lines.
We met through Facebook, and I couldn't imagine that the interview, dedicated to the exhibition of the last century, would have a sequel, that a film would be made about Farb, and that the grateful residents of Novosibirsk would want to name one of the streets of their city in honor of the American photographer.
Adirondack photographer
Nathan Farb (1941–2026) is considered a master of landscape photography of the second half of the 20th century. Born in Oklahoma, he moved with his mother to the Adirondack Mountains in northwestern New York at the age of five. This place and its mountainous landscapes became the central theme of his life. After graduating from Rutgers University in New Jersey, Nathan moved to New York City, bought his first camera, and became forever fascinated with photography. In the mid-1960s, he took a series of photographs on the streets of New York's East Village, which became part of the "Summer of Love" series, dedicated to the hippie generation and the psychedelic revolution.
In the early 1970s, Nathan Farb created the multimedia work "Lockport: Portrait of Middle America," which was shown at the Public Theater in New York City. Using then-avant-garde technology, he recreated the image of the average American from the "silent majority" of the Nixon era. Rutgers University then invited Farb to direct the photography and multimedia program at the experimental Livingston College. In 1977, Farb traveled to the USSR as a member of a cultural diplomacy mission for the U.S. Information Agency. In Novosibirsk, he photographed citizens with a large-format Polaroid camera and immediately handed over the finished images, secretly keeping the negatives. His book "Russians" (1980) was published in six countries.
Farb's reportage photography for the New York Times, covering the Yellowstone fires and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, earned him a reputation as a chronicler of natural disasters. In 2004, his album "Adirondack Wilderness" was published, becoming a benchmark for contemporary landscape photography. Farb's works are held in the collections of MoMA and private collections.
Far from Moscow
The "Photography USA" exhibition in Novosibirsk was made possible by the kiss of peace exchanged between Brezhnev and Carter in 1976. This embrace ushered in a brief period of "détente," which was cut short by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During those three years of peace, lively cultural exchanges took place between America and the USSR. Nathan Farb was fortunate to be one of the few Western "peace doves" to fly to Siberia. He was the first American with a camera allowed into post-war Novosibirsk. Naturally, he was sternly warned that he could not photograph anything without permission—neither people nor buildings—everything was classified. Naturally, he disobeyed. In his free time, he would go out to the main street, Krasny Prospect, and secretly photograph "from the hip" to capture as many images of the city as possible.
Despite its name, the street was drab. The only thing that enlivened it were the red rectangles of banners with white letters that hung on every house, reminiscent from a distance of a Coca-Cola advertisement.
The more trips the photographer made, the more similarities he found between Siberians and Americans. People on the street didn't seem like monsters ready to tear a foreign tourist apart for a pack of gum. Teenagers wore jeans, listened to transistor radios, and didn't wash their hair. Just like in America. Women clearly followed fashion and strove to dress well. This was a pleasant discovery. Before his trip to the USSR, Nathan thought all Russian women looked like Khrushchev's wife. Men wore identical baggy suits and carried identical briefcases with bottles of liquor inside.
Sharing a drink was the only form of intimacy. Nathan recalled a trip out of town, to the dacha of an artist who painted strange images—UFOs over a collective farm, distorted figures, and gloomy skies—nothing resembling the poster art of socialist realism. The artist, who spoke little English, managed to answer the question without an interpreter: how could they allow him to do such things? He clapped the American on the shoulder and said loudly (Russians always speak to foreigners as if they were deaf): "Moscow is one of the Faraways. We're far from Moscow. Let's drink!"
"Of course, I wasn't so naive as to be unaware of the 'curators' monitoring my actions," Farb said. "One day at an exhibition, I invited a very young girl to lunch. She was 14, and she came to our exhibition almost every day, always bringing her drawings. I knew she wanted to talk about art with a real American, so I invited her to have a hamburger in the special cafeteria where we were being fed. The next day, the exhibition's general manager called me and was informed that I had arranged a date with a minor. I explained to him that the complaint was completely trumped-up, since I had merely offered a few words of encouragement to the aspiring artist. Incidentally, her portrait was featured in a report published by The New York Times. It's 'Elena,' the girl with the braids."
In English, these braids are called pigtails. The girl came so often that people started teasing Nathan: "You have a tail, a pigtail." The topic was relevant, as the Novosibirsk KGB tried to monitor the Americans' every move. Moreover, everyone was a little wary of provocation. So, just in case, he invited his assistant John to accompany him on their "date." John spoke fluent Russian, although, unlike Nathan, he had no Russian roots and was 100 percent American.
John's love of Russia was instilled in him by his father, the renowned Joseph Beyrle, perhaps the only two-time veteran of World War II. In 1944, Joseph was captured by the Germans in Normandy. But he managed to escape and made his way across Germany to the East, where he met the Red Army, which welcomed him as one of its own and recruited him as a tank machine gunner. From the Soviet command's perspective, Mr. Beyrle's arrival was a perfect opportunity—the division had an American Sherman tank, and no one could read the instruction manual.
Nathan and John entertained Pigtails with this story and other anecdotes while they waited for the waiter to serve "real American food": a hamburger bun, French fries, and a Coca-Cola. Their charming guest devoured the entire treat like a tsunami. She literally ate for three, and after finishing John's portion, she felt compelled to declare, "I don't usually eat so much food, but this is my only chance." The sensitive John nearly burst into tears. His face darkened, as if at that moment he had vowed to fight communism until every Russian child had a juicy Big Mac. Thirty years later, his diplomatic career culminated in his position as US Ambassador to Russia, and he personally witnessed the accomplishment of his mission.
Nathan recalled this story during an interview for the first time in many years. He thought his Siberian trip was a thing of the past, and the memories that surfaced surprised him. It was as if he'd been to another planet! So I asked if he'd like to return to Novosibirsk to meet the subjects of his photo shoot 40 years later? Or even 41, since it was already 2018, and the exhibition had taken place in 1977. Nathan jokingly replied, "Why not disprove old Heraclitus by stepping into the same water twice?" Of course, he didn't believe such a journey was possible.
But someone was found who persuaded Farb to return to Siberia. Frankfurt-based documentary filmmaker Nathaniel Knoop saw this story as an opportunity for a political and philosophical conversation. Thus, the documentary "Nathan Farb and the Cold War" was born. Nathaniel managed to find people who had been photographed by Farb and now live all over the world, from Novosibirsk to New York. In November 2018, Nathan Farb, accompanied by his daughter, flew to Novosibirsk. A photo studio was rented, and the subjects of the 1977 photo shoot came in every day. They struck the same poses they had then, and the results were truly spectacular. Nathan performed something magical, like an old Kabbalist who understood the nature of time better than anyone.
"I've always believed that photography is a form of magic. While studying photography at Rutgers University, I felt a bit like a sorcerer: first, you make certain movements with your camera, then you stick your hands into a black sleeve to remove the film from the camera and insert it into the film tank. It's all reminiscent of shamanic rituals," Farb mused after the departure of yet another guest from the past.
They came from all over the country. From Minsk came the very beautiful 60-year-old Galya, wearing a new dress. Putting everything aside, the very successful Tanya, a PR manager for a major pharmaceutical company, flew in from Moscow. Ballet master Kazimir arrived from Belgrade. A dwarf arrived from Akademgorodok, who turned out to be different from the one who had once starred in Nathan's film. Everyone felt awkward, but he waved it off: "Okay, don't worry about it. People always confuse us dwarfs. I'm used to it."
Nikolai Kharitonov, a State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, showed up. In 1977, he was the chairman of a collective farm, fighting for the harvest, increasing milk yields, and implementing the decisions of the 25th Congress. One day, he was in town on business and decided to spend some time culturally, visiting an American exhibition. That's how he ended up at Polaroid.
This time, he flew in from Moscow for the unveiling of the Stalin monument and explained to us all that Stalin was a great man and the scale of the repressions had been greatly exaggerated. "I had a prisoner in my family too," Nikolai Kharitonov said. "On June 22, 1941, my uncle blurted out in a rather intimate circle that we would lose the war with Germany: the Germans had good planes, and ours were made of shit. Someone wrote a denunciation, and my uncle went to Kolyma. But he never held a grudge against Stalin or the Soviet regime. We ultimately won the war. So, who was right? My uncle or Stalin? I think it's a good thing we managed to maintain faith in communism, because capitalism is doomed. Especially after Trump was elected president of the United States."
“I think I agree with you on that,” muttered Mr. Farb, tired of translating the State Duma deputy’s speech.
It was November 7, 2018. A red political carnival was unfolding on Lenin Square in front of the opera house. A plywood armored car, costumed Red Army soldiers, very elderly ladies in Budyonovka hats, the song "And Again the Battle Continues" blaring from the speakers. Nathan Farb, completely overjoyed, was photographing his peer with a waist-length gray beard and a fur hat with earflaps emblazoned with a large red star. It seemed as if time had truly stood still at this point in space. Heraclitus had been disgraced. And Lenin, so young…
Nathan Farb said he believed in the existence of doppelgangers. He claimed that multiple versions of a single person live on Earth simultaneously—parallel realities that sometimes intersect in space.
If this is true, then we have a chance to meet again.
A film about Nathan Farb can be viewed in a German online cinema. doc@home.
Photo by Nathan Farb and Andrey Filimonov.
