Voices of History
When you pick up this album, you realise that it’s not merely a collection of photographs – it’s a testimony. A testimony to an era which has passed but which we must preserve for our children.
Alexander Nagralyan was not merely a photographer – he was a chronicler of Soviet life, of its key milestones and, most importantly, of our compatriots, the Soviet people. In this book, Yuri Gagarin is not an icon but a smiling lad with the whole of the cosmos in his eyes; it shows Bella Akhmadullina in all her fragile strength and spirituality; and stage legend Mireille Matthieu, performing one of her songs. Alexander Nagralyan’s lens didn’t just capture faces – it captured the soul of a great country. That very same soul that people today are trying to stamp out, re-write and debase.
It is extremely important that “Living History” now speaks in four languages: Russian, English, Chinese and Greek. This dialogue between cultures is the aforementioned bridge, which is capable of countering any attempts to divide the world. This is our way of saying look, here it is, our truth. The truth of labour, the truth of victory, the truth of a great culture.
For that reason, this book is more than a book. It is an act of defence of our past. And as we know, without a past, there can be no future and no Motherland. Only through awareness of the power and grandeur of our history can we find the strength for today’s challenges.
This is the path - the path of truth and of dignity, earned not borrowed - that we have always followed. And will follow in future.
Nikita Mikhalkov
In the autumn of 1976, I met Alexander Nagralyan during my second trip to the USSR, in Moscow, where I performed in the magical / great Bolshoi theatre – a symbolic place for Russian culture.
During that visit, the famous photographer Alexander Nagralyan shot several photographs and pictures of my performance in the Bolshoi Theatre and on the streets of Moscow. For me, this will remain a wonderful reminiscence and moment of exchange between our French culture and the Russian people, which will always remain in my memory.
Mireille Mathieu
Your work has always been distinguished by consummate mastery and sincerity, and from your subjects one could study the geography of the world and the most important events in history. That is why these portraits have become a truthful reflection of the many years our country has lived through.
Artur Chilingarov (from a congratulatory telegram to A. G. Nagralyan)
A great artist, capturing the moments of life, sees not only colour, light, shadow or the beauty of a sunset, but feels all the subtleties and the depth of human life on this earth. Through the small lens of his gaze he perceives the sheer grandeur of humanity as a whole and the very essence of different people’s characters, their destiny. He reveals, “extracts” from them that image which makes the viewer freeze in an instant before this revelation! Such shock and rapture you feel, gazing upon the photographs of the great master Alexander Nagralyan!
Before you are photographs of the very people who, with their own hands, built our Great country, our Russia, our Motherland. Alexander knew them, understood them, marvelled at them and, most importantly, captured them forever and inscribed them into history with his remarkable photographs.
His choice is paradoxical! His heroes are unique! They are people of different professions – intelligent, strong, open – like the Atlantes who hold our earth upon their muscular arms. There is a vast multitude of them, across every region of our immense country: on the BAM, on the polar ice floes, in the cotton fields, on ships in the ocean. They teach and they learn, they descend into the depths of the mines and to the bottom of the seas, they pilot aeroplanes and soar in space rockets. They are the PEOPLE! Great and strong. You believe in them, you long to follow them, to learn from them, to come to know life alongside them. They are that very EPOCH.
Thank you, Alexander, for having preserved them in our memory so powerfully, so sincerely and so truthfully.
Anastasia Vertinskaya