The Eksar Gallery has opened an exhibition of Iryna Pap’s photos, A History of Hopes: Ukraine, Kyiv, The Fifties and Sixties through the Eyes of an Outstanding Photo Correspondent. “The rank of the reporter is the highest one in a photo laboratory, and Kyiv has always stood out for its reporters”, the godfather of the Ukrainian film operators, Izrayil Goldshtein, said at the exhibition. But he named only some of them — Davydson, Hradov, Leonidov, the Kapustiansky brothers — renowned authors of photo documentaries that have fixed history the way it was.
It is no accident that Iryna Pap’s exhibition is the first one in the project launched by the Kyiv Union of Photographic Artists to collect the archives of old photographers and make them open to the public eye. “We are going through times of deficiency of historic material in the art of photography, for, as usual, the photographers pass away, taking with them their rich archives, and much of photographic material get into possession of people unable to value it,” Viktor Marushchenko, the chairman of the Kyiv union, emphasized. Today’s exhibition was opened due to an incident: in 1991 Iryna Pap’s negatives were found in the dumpster of the editorial of Izvestiya where she had worked all her life. The first shots taken from a helicopter of Khreshchatyk, reconstructed after the war, the granting of a Lenin Award to Ukraine, the enthusiasm of May Day demonstrations, the try-outs of the first Zaporozhets cars and An planes, styles of pants and blouses, the title of long- forgotten newspapers and ensembles from a time when the country was poor but proud and quite differently cynical than now. It looks as if it is painful for society to look at the snapshots from its childhood. It feels much safer thinking that life begins anew each day than recalling that once you felt enthusiastic about things now ridiculed. But Iryna Pap’s camera did not catch the showoff idiots but joyful children instead. Thus, with all the documentary character of the photos presented, on which even the street phone booth resembles history, I was most struck by the enthusiastic endeavor of the captivating idea, present within anyone at any time.
