"An Image Almost From the 'Workers Paradise'"

The Communist Soviet Union, now collapsed of its own efficiency

almost 19 years, left some enduring legacies, such as this Soviet-style

meat market at a bazaar, complete with uniforms for the workers, at a

larger bazaar (market) near Kyiv, Ukraine (Kyiv also has superstores -

hypermarches - four tiems the size of the largest Wal-Mart or Costco).

The 'look and feel' of this photo is of the sort the Soviets liked to trumpet

when they were espousing their agglomeration of languages and

nationalities as a 'workers' paradise' -- the knowing smile' and the good

humor among workers -- all of them supposedly 'equal' (truth is a job in

a meat market was the best job, as it meant you got to eat MEAT

which was not available to all, much of the time). Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly, very

critically or wish to leave a comment; please subnit a helpful and

constructive comment; thanks in advance for sharing your photographic

knowledge to help improve my photography. Enjoy! John

Cartier-Bresson, a son of one of France's 200 richest families, was a Socialist sympathizer, and as such he was the first 'Western' photographer invited after World War II to come to the formerly closed Soviet Union to photograph its people . . . . who invariably the Communists liked to be photographed at work, amid their work, and often with 'good humors' since (in name at least) the Soviet Union (including then Ukraine) was a 'Workers' Paradise'.  Repeat, 'in name' at least.

This photo, for me, is like turning back the clock over 50 years and opening a copy of Life Magazine to see those first images of that formerly mysterious and forbidden land, so little has changed and so well does it capture my memory of those first images.  I did not know of this guy named 'Cartier-Bresson' but do remember the images -- smiling people, interesting captures done sympathetically . . . . and with a loving but discerning eye (after all, sympathizer or not it was Cartier-Bresson!)

The look in this woman's face, left, could have been taken any time from then to now, even though Kyiv, Ukraine now has supercenters that dwarf anything that can be found in the United States, but all on its outskirts where they are reachable by car (and have parking lots) not near the center, where this market serves the 2-1/2 million person capital by greatly efficient Metro and a pretty good bus system.

Enjoy!

(I do not otherwise compare myself or my work to Cartier-Bresson's -- his work was magnificent . . . . well, mine is only an afterthought compared to his.)

john

John (Crosley)

Ambitious students and young workers eagerly sought two jobs (maybe three) in the former Soviet Union, I have learned from my life formerly living at times in post-Soviet Russia from those who worked there during Soviet times.

The first is that because the Soviet Union had a 'planned economy' it had, especially in its capital, Moscow, a great number of 'economists' who were quite alien to the Western concept of what an economist was -- they decided who would get what and how much of everything.

Few knew that one of the largest buyers of Dior gowns, an admiral's wife told me, was the Soviet Union, but only the elite ever saw them, and they often were in 'large' sizes.

Economist was not just a rare job doled out to  select 'Wall Street' few, but a job held by huge numbers of people.  In the Capitalist system which now reigns in Ukraine, it's called 'supply and demand' and business people (who were criminals for the most part under the Soviets and thrown into jail in many instances) make those decisions.  Small wonder in the post-Soviet age, the business people seem to 'know' the criminals -- they were often imprisoned together before the fall of the Soviet Union.

Another job was 'fish market or meat market' worker.

Such people always brought home product from work and they ate well -- while their compatriots -- the other workers from the workers' paradise often had to stand in lines which often meant there would be emptiness when one's turn came.

(From friends, personal experience, interviews, extensive reading both inside and outside Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, from the lowest levels to one source who was a friend of Brezhnev -- name not revealed).

john

John (Crosley)

Really beautiful work again, very nicely composed, John!

To take an image like this is one reason I go regularly to Ukraine -- one literally can turn back the calendar (in images at least) from time to time, and capture things that the old classic black and white photographers did -- almost the same scenes and then compare them.

This reminds me so much of what Cartier-Bresson came back from the Soviet Union with.  Of course, I think he had to deal with censors/ I don't.

Thank God!

Thanks again, Ruud.

john

John (Crosley)

A very good documentation but also a creative and aesthetic street shot. Hence 6. Thanks for all the background infos given. Very useful and I'm therefore thinking you're doing a very interesting and valuable job here (documenting the current daily life in Eastern Europe from your  perspective in a sensitive manner). BR / Volker

Volker,

This shot has special significance to me:  it is emblematic of why I have made so many trips to Ukraine, a second world country trying to inch its way into the first world.

Eighty-five or so percent of its citizens envision themselves 'middle class' but defined by economic parameters, fewer than 20 per cent make it, according to a survey taken a year and a half ago, before hyperinflation kicked the bejesus out of the hryvnia reducing its buying power by 60% against major currencies and sending the economy into a tailspin along with the rest of the world. There had been too much capital invested on Ukrainian promises and it was too 'easy' with too few restrictions and much got misused, corrupted (some) and never got paid back.  The local currency nosedived and has stayed where he fell.

Ukraine actually has a pretty vital economy, with high rise buildings, and in Kyiv all Parisian designers represented, and many also in Dnepropetrovsk, where there is a surprising amount of money . . . . but it's not all 'trickle-down'

Scenes like this are not too common in Kyiv, and more so in outlying areas, but the modern supermarket literally has taken over.  For all but vegetables (and veal, not beef, but veal as all their beef gets put into sausage), I shop at a hypermarche (super, supermarket) and get my vegetables at a 'bazaar' because they're wonderfully fresh, often off the farm directly - sometimes hours old (not in winter of course when they're scarce).

This is a scene that is almost historical though taken in 2010, as it literally has not changed much since Communist times.  Notice, no refrigeration, meat freshly butchered lays out on a stainless steel table . . . . . and is not wrapped.  It's fresh, so no worry about sickness, as I found out eventually when I ventured forth into such a market, and the best meat is sealed into a Saran Wrap kind of plastic (veal of course), and 1/4 the US price. 

Makes me hungry.  I have some in my refrigerator and guess I'll go cut myself a few veal steaks for dinner.  Yum,

Historical info is designed to put this photo into perspective; few have the ability to do so themselves, while with my larger and greater perspective I do.

Thanks for a very good compliment.

john

John (Crosley)

This photo is rich in detail, from the strips of pork fat in front (sale which is very popular with Ukrainians though PURE FAT), to the scales in the far upper left.  Want brains?  They have them.  The French would ooh and ahhh at such a selection.

Notice those scales are (at the right) powered by springs; springs are unreliable, but 'who cares?'  It's raditional. the other scale is a hybrid with using counterweights (see the 1 kilo lead weight on the left?) with a spring mechanism inside.

Nothing electronic here.

Just the same methods of 50-60 years ago for those who are nostalgia buffs (like me in this instance.)

I buy some meat in markets like this desite lack of refrigeration becaue they get the best meat, and it's killed fresh and does not sit on the shelf for several days even under refrigeration.  They cut it: it sells.  Plus for half the year it's refrigeration cold in Ukraine and places like this get very cold inside, though not allowed to get freezing or they couldn't cut the meat.

john

John (Crosley)

It is interesting to see how a photo of a meat shop can evoke the atmosphere of a political-economic system. While seeing this photo I smell the heritage of the socialist system. I still see similar scenes in Ulaanbaatar. Well done. Keep documenting. Karl

Your comment helps to prove my point(s).

There's a new competition about 'street' in which the first instruction is 'It's a street photo, if you can 'smell' the street' referring to Bruce Gilden's famous definition.  Here it's a meat market, but of course, 'street' is not confined to a physical 'street'. 

Interestingly, there really is no 'smell' since all is freshly butchered . . . .and no decay or flies.

Thank you so much for the compliment; don't be a stranger.

john

John (Crosley)

About 'keep documenting'.

It is not my intent really to 'document'.

I just take 'street photos' where you see an image such as this.

That it's a documentary is just a plus - partly because I wanted to take photos like the old black and white classics so I chose the country of Ukraine where the old and the new go side by side.  One day I can be photographing glitz and the next a timeless scene straight from a half century ago.

No intent really to document, but more to take 'classics'.

I also try to take 'modern classics' which will be more appreciated long after I'm gone I hope.

See some of my work from California, Vienna, Paris, or even from the more glitzy, modern sections of Kyiv -- or Bangkok, Hong Kong, and so forth.

I'm 'street' first; documentarian bringing up the rear.

I DO EXPLAIN the documentary aspect, sometimes too much, which may be why some people think I'm a 'documentarian', but that's just icing.

It's the photo that counts and if it's worthless or not up to par, then all the explanatory words in the world won't save it.

john

John (Crosley)

Excellent document ... Your comments are always interesting for me, John ... I like the way you tell us how you "feel" your shots. Keep documenting ... A hug ... Richard.

It's funny (American idiom for 'interesting'), that I didn't start out to be 'the big explainer' of anything.

I just wanted a place to show my photos, which when I started were mostly old photos that now fit what has become known as the category of 'street' and 'environmental portrait' or 'street portrait'.  Those categories, I am not sure existed when I took them in the late '60s and early '70s before I took a very, long (decades long) hiatus, shooting only a few times or less a decade, just to satisfy myself (or friends) that 'I still had what it takes') and finding photography 'hot sweaty work' which I found disagreeable, though I liked the results.

Come 2004, after completing a Dreamweaver Class with poor marks, intending to build a web site just to show my 'old' work, I challenged myself to either take some new photos in my yard in one hour or give away my old (and very expensive) photo gear.  I was extremely successful . . . and at the same time heard of Photo.net.  I began posting, mostly old stuff, but some new stuff also.

I found that most members would NOT explain how they achieved certain looks, used certain techniques and in general were entirely secretive about the 'sharing' part of Photo.net.

I began to think of Photo.net as a place of very selfish or very inarticulate photographers -- some were from other countries and didn't then have machine translations that worked worth a damn, and others who were English speakers and writers, just wanted to keep secrets.

That's find if one is sharing photo results only; the forums were in total disarray - the Leica forum itself was then so vicious it was chosen as a 'study forum' in 'how not to maintain a forum by some university researchers' who took various posts to demonstrate 'trolling' and various other adverse aspects of forum bad behavior.

This site has mostly been cleaned up now; and it's been done wonderfully for the most part.  The ratings problems have been compromised so we no longer have much community, but much of that community worked against members as well as for them; there were mate-rating cliques who uprated their friends' photos and sometimes down rated those they saw as competing who were not from 'clique members'. 

Anonymous or better 'semi-anonymous rating' helped stop the greater part of that.

And through it all, I decided I would act alone, and since few then appreciated 'street', I decided to explain to those who did seem interested, just exactly HOW, WHEN and WHERE the shots were achieved.

I did not just do that with street, but with other genres as well, for though I am known for 'street' I have taken a substantial number of nudes (not posted), bird photos (not posted and a large number on hard drives stolen, even indexed separately, many taken on the West Coast and one famed slough in particular), landscapes, and other genres, often to good reviews.

I liked to fancy myself a 'jack of all trades' because I could basically size up a situation after a while because of my 'street' experience and take the same photo after one minute as after 30 minutes of reflection.  Nothing slow about me and my thinking about my photography and composition.  What worked in 30 seconds often was what worked best after 30 minutes, so going to take landscapes was a long ride to the scene, a few minutes of taking the photos, then a long ride back.  Bad use of time, when a stroll down a street might yield ten times as many 'keeper' shots.

And I really hated and didn't want to be known as a Photoshopper, as then many people did (and still might) call this Photoshop.net, for the very large amount of Photoshopping done here.

A famous friend, a Lucie Award winner, told me once over dinner in his personal 'masters class' just for me -- some people Photoshop just because they can, not because it is proper.

But for those who take few photos and have lots of evenings home alone when they cannot take photos, working at a computer with a post processing program (Photoshop or others) is good work for them.

I do little of it; it's just easier for me to take a wealth of new photos and if one doesn't do it; take another.

I liked explaining what I did, because from the very first, people were asking me questions, either in portfolio comments, photo comments or in my private e-mail.

I almost always answered them and I hope articulately.  I had decided if others were secretive, I'd be just the opposite.

I responded to almost every comment.  That feature, borrowed from one-liners from one member, [Loft Portugal] has become a standard now for members seeking to gain notoriety on Photo.net as a means of gaining attention and acknowledging viewership of their images.  I've since seen member after member use that method of gaining friends and gaining a great deal of influence after they've been members only a short time.

I take unusual photos, and have done what is perhaps Photo.net's largest 'Presentation'   'Photographers:  Watch Your Background' which still is in progress awaiting a software update that may never come.

Essentially it is a book manuscript in jigsaw puzzle form just waiting for me to complete it, substitute newer with older (obsolete and not so good images) and then publish. But where and how to publish now that publishing is giong down the drain and everybody steals everything.

I think it or parts of it would make a great textbook for college-level courses in photography, particularly for 'extra' credit or for advanced level reading.

Same with putting together my comments from here and just editing them which is why some comments are marked with the Copyright symbol, as is this one, Copyright 2010, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved.

I have also been sure to copyright and properly register all my photos.

Galleries and museums, I have been told by experts, may be VERY interested in my work, and I would have been at their doors two years ago, except for an auto accident and then the global economic crisis which took buyers out of the market almost entirely.

My source, well acquainted with just about everybody who's anybody in the gallery/museum business, tells me there's a great opportunity for me there, and his last protégé went on to become La's featured photographer last year at a certain photo expo (it could have been me, I am lead to believe or may be me in the future, or better).

But about explaining . . . I do it because I can type wickedly fast, and think at the keyboard about as fast as I type or much faster . . . . and almost never backup, a product of my journalist days . . . . and a very valuable product indeed.

So I am known as prolific.

I literally think in six to eight weeks I could turn out a textbook on street photography or on many others areas of photography that related to composition, posing, and extemporaneous photography . . . . just so long as it didn't require lots and lots of research (which I can do, but research eats up time.)

In essence, what you see written here, and throughout Photo.net is designed to be printed in a book or otherwise or elsewhere some day.

Ken Rockwell makes his living advising others on how to use and make choices about cameras and lenses and for one guide gets a $5 donation to his PayPal account. 

I've had tens of millions of viewers of my photos here and over 61,000 view my home page alone.  I've been No. one (with  a very famous and much-indexed last name due to a pair of industrialists from the Midwest in the mid 1900s) for about 5 years . . . and at times with up to 30 to 50 blogs helping themselves to my photos and many of those taking advertising (from using my images)

I know there's a market for what I have to write:  it's the same reason you wrote me.

For now I write for free and may continue to use Photo.net as a proving ground.

In fact, even if I publish, I may continue to use Photo.net as a proving ground for my prose and my photography - it's also a great 'social club' though members seldom if ever meet aside from a few guys in Singapore and some other places.

But I know I have friends around the world, and if I need help, many will help me spread the word if my ventures go beyond merely exhibiting on Photo.net (and another site I won't name here, which has OTHER images not shown here for the most part-- see Google.com for a link if you want to see 'another side of John's work' less geared toward 'popularity', or in some cases just the color or 'desaturated' versions of photos shown in 'color' or 'black and white' here.

As many photos show well in both color and black and white.

You may know I'm not a young guy, but when I go out and shoot with youths, they instantly include me (well almost instantly -- 5-20 minutes) as 'one of the group' and often eagerly await my next visit.

I've spent well in to seven figures with my photography, and someday I probably must get a payback, but what an investment in wonderfulness . . . . . It's what keeps me up at night and sometimes gets the drowsy me up in the morning. 

Photography (more than law was when I practiced law) is the part of me that keeps me alive.

I get double to thousands of times the return from photography when I can share it.

When I took photos in the '20s, I kept my prints and negatives (show quality prints) in a big print paper box and brought it out for a select few.  Those who remained interested, were on a short list to friendship; those who weren't I've forgotten who they were except one wife who had outstanding other attributes (but discouraged my photography mostly because it gave me an opportunity to take

Just look at this image.

It's had 88 views in slightly over 24 hours since posting.

It's also got 11 ratings and a goodly number of comments (over and above the many by me)

Maybe nobody wants to click on it in thumbnail, but when they get to it and HAVE to see it maybe because they're clicking on ALL the images in the highest commented or highest number of rates on the sorting engine, they are interested enough THEN to be moved to rate.

I LOVE THIS IMAGE.

I'd put it on a book of my best of all time.

And certainly will.

That's a book you can be sure I will publish if I have to do it myself. (Again).

Oh, and I get stopped in the street, sometimes and in strange cities in airports on more than rare occasions, where people I've met before buttonhole me to tell me they've seen my photos on Photo.net, AND to prove their point and to show that they're excited about my photography and LOVE the images almost every one of such persons has one or several 'favorite images' which they try to tell me about (sometimes with success, sometimes not). 

It can be frustrating if I don't have a laptop trying to match their description with a photo, or even the 'caption' (title) with the photo I remember having posted; I get mixed up sometimes (they do also, but not too often).

It's interesting when strangers in strange cities approach one like me (not a celebrity by any means) and start describing their favorite photos!

That's a major reason why I take these photos and post them. 

When once all I could do was put great photos into a box hidden away with the silverware, they meant something to me, but nothing to anybody else.  I and my photography were virtually unknown.  Now I'm findable worldwide in less than a second on Google.com and other search engines.

Now the world can see those and newer photos, and some substantial number of people DO WANT TO, which thrills me to the bone.

I wouldn't give up my incredible past life experiences for anything, but I'd have loved to see what would have happened if I hadn't met Cartier-Bresson and (moreover) seen his images in a museum that day and just given up photography basically for decades.

'As Brando said in 'On the Waterfront'  'I mightta been somebody!' [photographically]

Now I'm just a photo Palooka with some images.

And I'm still talking about the 'big time' despite advancing age (but did you spot my girlfriend in my photos - she's young, beautiful, intelligent unnamed and she'd surprise you if you saw her . . . . . -- she never will be identified, though my last wife is and was equally (or more) beautifully and had an IQ that had to measure 200 easily (before the brain cancer at age 29).

Don't be a stranger, Ricardo.

john

John (Crosley)

John something is always going on in your photos. They never leave me cold. They are always just the beginning of a story waiting be told. 

This one is indeed from the "workers paradise" where common people were sure to be educated and cared for throughout their lives. There was a darker side to it, but for people like these those days had quality that since are bygones. Whether we like it or not some of these people would look back with some nostalgia. Don't start a discussion on the cold war or the like, but your title invites for a few comments like these.

The scene is admirable. The mere mass of meat, mostly pork, shows cultural heritage and some kind of abundance. For anyone that knows meals of the region in question, the view of the it gives appetite and calls on the services of the stands around with tons of vegetables (cabbage, potatoes, onions, beans, carrots, tomatoes...).

The women in the forefront, the used knife - one almost sitting in the meat! - the sleeve of a shirt with a pattern of a branch of leaves with strong (?) colors makes us wonder of the color chock of the scene. All very lively and very telling.

I'm sure, John, that when it comes to this shot you did not pay, but surely you bought some cuts of good meat.

Your comment is so superb, that I'll just leave it as it stands, and invite people to read it.

It tells so much about this photo, the times and the culture, that I literally have nothing to offer other than to 'flesh it out' a little with my own experience in such markets.

I buy my meat elsewhere, but at something almost like this .  . . no refrigeration, freshly butchered, (nothing in plastic or cryocarcasses) veal and cheaper than beef in the USA.

I buy chickens cooked at the hypermarche/supermarket for almost the same price as uncooked, and they're like those at Costco.  Pork chops are cheapest at the supermarket, and such stores as this sell 'roasts' rather than western style chops most frequently.  They'd cut the chops for free, but you can't buy a chop to save your soul at such a place, generally.

Even though 'unrefrigerated' I've NEVER had a bad piece of meat yet from such a market.  These people don't want to get or cause sickness either and the Soviets left an incredible awareness of hygiene in its Republics, though one wouldn't know it by going into a normal, rural Russian or Ukrainian public toilet

(Oh, the humanity of it all! Which is why McDonald's is such a success - clean toilets).

Beef is almost impossible to find as it's all ground up . . . and not into hamburger ('farci', as in the French, boeuf 'farci',  . . . . but rather into sausage, and in the summer mainly for shashlik, but they prefer pork for shashlik too).  Ymmmm!  Shashlik!   Of course the few Muslims and the few remaining Jews either eat lamb (hard to find) chicken, or beef.

(that being said, THE BEST PORK CHOPS I EVER ATE WERE CONSISTENTLY SOLD BY A RESTAURANT IN DNEPROPETROVSK OWNED BY JEWS.  How can that be, you're Jewish? I asked them.  'Ah, but we're Ashkenazy, said the matron and chef de cuisine -- it means nothing to us.'  (Jewish dietary 'laws' I understand though DO apply to Ashkenazy, even if not observed so strictly as Orthodox and Conservative Jews).

If you want a hamburger, go to McDonald's; there's plenty, as it's not commonly sold in supermarkets.

Sausage is, however, in huge abundance, from Germany through Russia, some of very good quality and refrigerated,and some salted and/or smoked and some of such poor quality it's almost all white from big chunks of fat - giving the appearance of a 'fat stick' rather than what westerners would recognize as sausage.

That's considered good eating for a days' long train ride across Russia on their efficient but very slow-moving long distance trains, together with some vodka from one's own bottle, then maybe an occasional cup of tea from the hot water in the huge samovar boiling at the end of each coach (The Russians don't want to get sick either; boiled water -- no chance of sickness from bad water while traveling.)

You're right about the color version - quite colorful, but doesn't quite hang together well enough to be a 'color only' post, so I desaturated (judgment call).

With enormous thanks.

john

John (Crosley

Anders,

Please forgive the misspelling above.

Before there was a time limit on the 'edit' function, it could have been easily and quickly cured with no trouble or attention.  Now it requires a comment (but you're worth it).

By the way, your comment above was so cannily 'right on' that I wonder if was you, unseen and unrecognized who was lurking around somewhere behind me or around me as I took this photo. ;~))

john

John (Crosley)