The Photos
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A limited edition of 28 signed photographs are available for purchase at $1500 each. ($1250 is tax-deductible.)
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"I had a friend in St. Petersburg named Leonid Lubianitsky. He was a theater photographer who eventually emigrated to the United States, and worked for a short time for Dick Avedon. Leonid convinced me to take a little automatic camera on one of my tours -- to Thailand and Japan. He gave me some film -- just black-and-white -- and said: "Point and shoot what you like. Then just bring me those rolls back. That's it." So I brought back maybe ten rolls of film, and he showed me what I'd done -- and I actually liked it!
That was the beginning of the end. It all started with a few really lucky shots, maybe twenty-three years ago. Immediately after that I went out and bought myself a better camera. I started to learn a little bit about technique and how to work with light. What I realized was that when you take a good image, you remember so much about that day: the place, this person, that landscape, some architectural detail. The image stays with you much longer than it would without that square, uncomfortable thing in your hands.
And there are always those moments when you see something and you don't have your camera with you, and you say to yourself: "Oh, there's a picture! That's something!" So -- to avoid those moments -- I usually drag the camera around with me."
--- Mikhail Baryshnikov
(Interview with Aperture No. 170, Spring 2003)