Hermitage photographer Yury Molodkovets decided to take pictures of ballerinas on the roof of the Winter Palace

“The Hermitage is a whole civilization”

— Yuri, you are one of the most famous photographers in Russia and the official photographer of the Hermitage…

— My position in the Hermitage is an artist-photographer. Two dozen photographers work there, it’s a giant museum. If you want to add some titles to me, just call me a great Russian photographer.

— Okay, great Russian photographer. But in fact, not quite like that – after all, you were born in Estonia.

— Then call me “great Estonian photographer!” (Laughs.)

— So how did you get to St. Petersburg, great photographer?

– I came to study and then stayed.

— Why exactly in the Northern capital?

– Because when I was a young man, higher education related to photography could only be obtained at VGIK in Moscow or at the Institute of Culture in St. Petersburg. I came here after high school, the first time I didn’t. Went to the army. He served a year, returned, entered, unlearned. And here I am in front of you.

— This year marks 30 years since you have been working in the Hermitage. How did it happen?

– The biography is very simple. After graduating from the Institute of Culture, I worked for several years at a design institute on Vasilyevsky Island. It was a turbulent time – the beginning of the 90s. I was engaged in various creative activities, I was friends with the Mitki, with whom we published a newspaper together. Then there was a surge of underground culture, which I was very interested in – both then and now. And quite by chance I came to the publishing department of the Hermitage for a consultation about Mitka-gazeta. Thus began a relationship with the museum, and then I was invited to work in the Hermitage in the publishing department. And then I moved into the photography sector and started working as a museum photographer. After a while, I realized that I was incredibly lucky. Because the Hermitage is a whole civilization where I want to continue working and die there.

– I heard that you want your body to be carried through the Winter Palace after death, then surrounded three times around the Alexandrian Column. A whole ritual was invented. Are you serious? Did you really make such a will?

— Such interviews help to fix such thoughts officially. I would really like to be carried along Palace Square, surrounded three times around the Alexandrian Column. I think it’s very beautiful.

– I hope it won’t be soon.

– There is no hurry. We have a lot of creative work ahead of us.

Let’s talk about the daily routine. What are your daily duties as a museum photographer for the Hermitage? I know that in January there was a commission that checked whether all employees come to work as expected – no later than 9.15 – and stay until 18 hours. But many museum employees have creative jobs, like you, that don’t involve sitting still all day. How is your working day?

– There is a natural schedule – from 9 to 18. But the tasks of the photographer can expand. There is a project in my creative portfolio called “Seclusion. Hermitage at night. I take it off only at night – for nine months. I come after sunset and take certain routes when there is no one in the museum. Not only visitors, but also employees. The lights are off, there is only the light of the moon, which passes through the windows and highlights some pieces of my favorite museum. It is clear that our director Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky gave me special permission for this. The mode may be different. If you need to photograph the sunrise, then you must come at 6 am, not at 9.15. And sometimes you have to come at midnight to catch the night light. All this is happening with the permission of the management, which understands that we are doing an important thing: museum photographers show what the ark looks like, which contains all the best that has been created by man in its history. Namely, such things are kept by the Hermitage.

How difficult is it to photograph art objects? What secrets do you have to show the museum exhibit in the most interesting and effective way?

“It is both difficult and easy. The secret is very simple: you must understand what you are shooting. Any exhibit is a work of art of some master. It belongs to a certain era, is made of some material, has some form. My main tools are camera and light. You have to set the light and frame the picture in such a way as to show the beauty of this subject. That is, you must be a well-watched person, love your job and be a great photographer. Because the task of the photographer is to show the contents of the museum in all its beauty and harmony in which it is located.

“I shoot on the phone and a tin can with a hole”

— Josef Sudek or Henri Cartier Bresson?

“Both of these masters amaze me. It’s just that they are very different: one is very intimate, the other essentially created street photography at the level of art. I don’t want to oppose them.

— What is the most unusual exhibit of the Hermitage that you have ever photographed?

— I have been working in the museum for 30 years and all the time I find some spaces that delight me. For several years now I have been shooting an endless series of “The Sun in the Museum”. It seems that the museum does not like the sun, because direct rays harm the exhibits, especially graphics and paintings, so the windows are curtained in the museum. But nevertheless, when the sun falls on the parquet, sculpture, decor details, it is so divinely beautiful that I photograph it with pleasure. In the process of photographing the sun in the museum, it turns out that it looks both there and here … It is important for me to find the intimate corners where it goes.

What kind of cameras do you have in your arsenal? Or in our digital age, a professional camera is not so necessary, and you can shoot with your phone, as you often do?

For some time now, I often shoot with a smartphone. But not only: I have a lot of cameras in my arsenal – both film and digital with different matrices. I have a tin can with a hole in it that I can also take pictures of if I put light-sensitive material in it, turning it into a camera obscura. This is the arsenal of tools that I use, the phone is included in it. Today it is an important tool because it is always with me. You are walking through the museum and suddenly you see some interesting scene – and you are already ready for this shooting, because the instrument is at hand. If we are talking about some special exhibits, then other cameras are better suited for this.

– You teach the course “Photography” at the St. Petersburg University of Industrial Technologies and Design. What do you tell students about, because you can give knowledge and the history of photography, but you cannot teach vision?

— My task is to give students an idea of ​​photography, which today is a global daily practice for all mankind. Tell about photography in general, about its philosophy, specifics as a fine art. I’m trying to teach you to understand the language of photography, speak it and set tasks for the photographer, because these are future designers and fashion designers.

What are the most important words in this particular language? Light…

“Of course, light. The second is composition. To be able to arrange beauty and harmony in a rectangle is a skill. You need to fill it with feelings, thoughts, light. This is the great magic of photography. Everyone can press a button and take a photo, but whether it will excite us is the question. It is clear to a professional photographer already at the shooting whether the result is a masterpiece or not.

— How many masterpieces do you think?

— I shoot a lot, and I have a lot of masterpieces.

— Is a photographer always a photographer, or are there moments when you deliberately put your camera away to chat with friends, for example?

– I stop being a photographer when I fall asleep. I opened my eyes and I am a photographer again. Professional deformation in my profession is that the photographer looks at the world, always highlighting some interesting moments: he catches emotions, movements, composition. I frame the world around me all the time. You can treat such professional deformation as you like, but I like it. I am always looking for beauty and harmony, and even while driving a car, I drive and see the shots, but this does not mean that I immediately stop and run to shoot. Although sometimes I stop, go out and take pictures.

– Do you have a dream – to be in some special place and take the best shot?

– The best shot is already there. The dream is to make projects that have already been conceived in the coordinates of the Hermitage. I have a lot of ideas and already filmed projects that have not yet been shown to the viewer.

– For example?

– For example, I have a project on the roof of the Winter Palace in my computer, filmed with premieres and prima ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theater. Conceptually, this is a dedication to the painting “Dance” by Henri Matisse.

— You said that you have already taken your best shot. What is he?

– The best shots – there are a lot of them. There is no one favorite. It happens that you take pictures, and then you don’t see them for a long time. And one day you suddenly plunge into the archive, you start flipping through, and they excite you.

– From the recent – that your forgotten suddenly found and excited?

— There was such a project “The New Hermitage”, filmed in 2001. I periodically show it at my creative meetings and every time I see it, I understand that it is wonderful. It depicts an Italian sculpture, which was wrapped in polyethylene during the restoration. That is, there was a combination of two materials – eternal marble with momentary polyethylene. In many ways, this corresponds to my understanding of the philosophy of photography, where it is important to find a balance between the moment and immortality.