Boris Goland

Ilya Goland

and his creativity

(1918 – 1977)

Ilya Goland. March 1941.

Ilya Goland was born on 2 January 1918 at Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia). He studied at the local gymnasium when he took an interest in photography. In 1938 he was enlisted in the Latvian Army and served in the Latgal Cavalry Regiment when Latvia was incorporated in the Soviet Union.

In 1941 the war broke out. Goland was seriously wounded twice. But the evil day in his life was 30 June 1944 when he was wounded by shell fragments for the third time. Ilya Goland served in a sound measuring reconnaissance detachment at the Karelian Front.

He was brought behind the front line with two soldiers. While detecting target No 392 (as the enemy's mobile artillery batteries were coded) their cable was broken. As the head of the group, he took a decision to eliminate the break himse if. He found the cable passing through tree branches and managed to link its ends when shrapnel hit him. Goland had luck to be found by the soldiers who managed to carry him back across the front line. His body was all injured with shell fragments. After that there were military hospitals and eleven operations in remote Sverdlovsk. As a result of gas gangrene his both legs were amputated …

Marianna Crechetov with the friends

There, deep in the rear, a letter from his distant homeland found him: both his father and mother died and his brother was missing. An old doctor tried to console Ilya Goland: "You'll live on."

But what for? Having no relatives and without legs, at twenty six...

Everything changed, however, when two staff members of the evacuated Hermitage Museum, the sisters Tamara and Maryana Krechetova, brought a camera with a captured film to Ilya and asked him to make photographs recording the life of the museum in the evacuation. It was the first time that a beam of hope burst into the young man's soul – he began to practice photography.

Ann Goland.1946.

Ilya Goland. 1946.

After the war Ilya Goland, awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War, 1st Degree, settled in Leningrad. The city on the Neva cast a spell over his heart and instilled a thirst for life in him. There, in a small flat on the ground floor of No 26/28 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, he arranged his first photographic studio and laboratory. That was only the start of his career as a creative photographer. After that he spent many nights over books on colour photography and made acquaintance of chemists, engineers and scientists.

Ilya Goland photographes from a roof of the automobile.

Moskow. 1957.

And he worked really hard during that period. He tirelessly climbed innumerable staircases, roofs and bell towers in search of vantage points affording expressive panoramic views. The photographer learned to drive a car with manual control. His friends gave him as a present a special stand with a rotating floor, folding screens and removable stairs that he set up on his Moskvich car. The structure enabled him to have a round view for making photography.

Ilya Goland was one of the first photographers who managed to produce colour separated films from colour negatives for printers.

At the beginning of the 1950s he published a great number of picture postcards, including views of the Crimea and the Caucasus. In 1952 he took part in the All Union Photographic Exhibition in Moscow, at the Central House of Art Workers, where his works were highly prized.

At first Ilya Goland made photographs by the German Linkhof camera, with an exposure measuring 13 by 18 cm, and from 1960 onwards he used for panoramic scenes a pre revolutionary Russian travel camera reconstructed by himself.

The format of the back "floating" wall of the camera was 50 by 50 cm, fitting the size of the matt glass and cassette for the standard film 36 by 16 cm. The camera was provided with an automatic German shutter and a set of Zeiss lenses and blends as well as a special wooden tripod.

Back of a card with the letter of I.Goland to the wife Ann. Moscow. July 31, 1956.

In July 1956 General Lieutenant A.Vvedenin, the Commandant of the Kremlin, gave his personal permission to Ilya Goland to photograph the Kremlin ensemble for two weeks. That was the beginning of work on a large photoalbum devoted to Moscow. He wrote then to his wife:" Dear Anya, I am glad to inform you that on the 25th I've started to work in the Kremlin. They treat me very kindly here and allow me to drive my car into the area of the Kremlin. Yesterday I climbed the Saviour Tower and was right near the clock. My young fellow and a special guide accompanied me. It was very difficult to climb the tower. An old winding staircase, strange passages.

Ann Goland. 2005г.

But when I did it, I was duly rewarded. The tower afforded a fascinating view of Red Square. I spent the whole day on the Kremlin wall; the weather was favourable yesterday; today I planned to climb another tower.

Alas, the sky is overcast and the sun does not peep through. I was allowed to do my work until August 15th, and I scare that the weather will let me down. "His creative interests were focused then not only on the quality of photographs, but on their subsequent reproduction in printing as well. Evolving his own technology and using a set of German colour separating filtres, he made from colour negatives a series of colour separated diapositives for each snapshot and sent them to the Goznak Printing House. The quality of the photographs was so high that they were readily accepted. The Moskovsky Rabochy publishing house was invited to join the work.

But Moscow photographers made every effort to block the publication. Negative reviews in the press were contrived and as a result Yekaterina Furtseva, Minister of Culture, ordered to look for works in colour by Moscow photographers.

However, the searches ended in failure and when Yeselev, Director of Moskovsky Rabochy, showed test proofs from the colour separated diapositives by Goland, the incident was over. "That'll be another bomb," Nikita Khrushchev is said to declare on seeing the proofs and ordered to provide morocco for the binding and paper for the print run. Thus, in 1957 the photoalbum Moscow, the first ever full colour art book in this country, created by Ilya Goland, was published with the government's approval and support.

In 1958 the Shostka Chemical Factory produced colour diapositives enlarged hundred fold on the experimental film of their own production. The factory won the Grand Prix for this work at the World Exhibition in Brussels.

A little later, working for the magazine Neva, Ilya Goland was commissioned to photograph the paintings from the Dresden Picture Gallery restored in Moscow, before their return to Germany. For this work, with a recommendation of the magazine, he was accepted to the Union of Journalists of the USSR in 1961.

Goland's next book Leningrad (Lenizdat Publishers, 1964) implemented his long cherished dream. A mere glance at two or three spreads in the photoalbum conjures up in one's mind a powerful image of the city eulogized by generations of artists, poets and prose writers. That was the first truly creative art book devoted to Leningrad. Nearly at the same time Sovietsky Khudozhnik and Planeta Publishers issued his photoalbums devoted to Leningrad. The latter was entirely comprised of panoramic views by Ilya Goland. His panoramic photography is a special story. To show the city as a system of ensembles was a tormenting challenge for him, both physically and technically. This task was perfectly fulfilled for his time and with the means available to him. This is even more striking if we bear in mind that the task proved to be unrealizable for other photographers. Ilya Goland was a clever, kind man with a great love for life. He owed much to his wife, Anna Goland, a life long companion and assistant in his work. She lived throughout the siege in Leningrad, studied and worked there, and was awarded the medals "For the Defence of Leningrad", "For the Victory over Germany", "For Labour Prowess", "In Honour of the 50^th Anniversary of the Great Patriotic War", "In Honour of the 300th Anniversary of St Petersburg" and "In Honour of the Liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi Siege". Ilya and Anna brought up three children together.

Ilya Goland with a road camera on quay of Neva. May, 1977.

In 1957, in memory of the war days and his relatives killed during the war, Ilya Goland bought for the money he got for the art book Moscow an estate at Losevo, a fascinating place on the Vuoksa River, a veritable gem of the Karelian Isthmus area. He planted 128 apple trees of various kinds on the estate and took care of them himself trimming their crowns and curing the bark. The tree stems were painted blue – there was no white water thinned emulsion paint – so the garden acquired a truly fantastic look.. Nowadays only 28 of the trees survive, because the other ones perished during the severe winters of 1978 and 1987.

Ilya Goland had a very demanding attitude to his work – shortly before his death he cleared his archive from ""immature" photographs. Three days before his demise Ilya Goland received from Planeta Publishers royalty copies of his last work, the souvenir book Leningrad , and signed them as presents to all those who were near him in his lifetime.

He died on 16 October 1977, on Sunday.

In 2005 the unique panoramic views of St Petersburg (then Leningrad) and its suburbs, photographed by Ilya Goland between 1962 and 1977, have been re created from his colour negatives – partly for the first time – and prepared for printing.

The panoramic plots of works I. Goland are complemented in the album by modern shooting executed by his senior son - Boris Goland.

<<< www.interlibrary.narod.ru

Forward >>>