REVIEWERS COMMENTS

"This volume presents to American readers the work of one of the best Russian photographers of the Soviet period, who has preserved for us precious insights into the people, society, and politics of the second half of the twentieth century. But it is not only a remarkable collection of photojournalism from the recent past; it also contains many images of high artistic quality that stand on their own as esthetic creations."

Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

From the "Memoirs" of Leonid Bergoltsev, in PEOPLE AMONG PEOPLE:

"During my almost forty years of life as an active photographer, I happened, as any photo-journalist, to have worked in a variety of conditions: on the earth, under the earth, on the sea and in the air. Mostly, in Russia, in the former Soviet Union.

I visited several tens of countries in the Northern hemisphere, some of them multiple times. And of course, I never departed without a camera, or more precisely cameras. Sometimes, five or even six of them were hanging on me: different films, different objectives.

I especially liked taking pictures of people who didn’t see me and were themselves. A human being’s psychology is such that when he sees an objective pointed at him, willingly or not, he starts to pose, i.e. tries to look, as it seems to him, better. That’s when he changes; he is no longer the same as he is in reality, but the one who he tries to be. He wouldn’t interest me as a photographer by that time.

In this book, I collected only those black and white pictures that I like myself. There are many different people - from ordinary passers-by to chiefs of states, from street merchants to the Pope - but thankfully few are the ones who posed."