Arkhangelsk museum presents book about Sedov's expedition with new photos

ARKHANGELSK, December 12. /TASS/. The Long Aging book about Georgy Sedov's expedition to the North Pole in 1912-1914 was presented at the Northern Maritime Museum in Arkhangelsk. The book features the expedition's 80 photographs, which Nikolay Pinegin made on glass plates, the museum's Director Evgeny Tenetov told TASS. Nikolay Pinegin (1883 - 1940) is a Russian and Soviet writer, artist, and Arctic explorer. During the 1912-1914 expedition on board the St. Foka ship, he was a photographer. "This book is, first of all, related to the collection of glass plates, which Nikolay Pinegin made during Sedov's expedition of 1912-1914," the museum's director said. "We, surely, did know we have those plates, but we could not sure how to exhibit them, because they are just small glasses. They are unique since most of them haven't been published, and some of them, in black-and-white, were published only in Pinegin's works in the 1920s-1930s. The book presents 80 plates." The photographer's widow Elena Pinegina donated the plates to the museum in the early 1990s. During that expedition, the photographer took pictures on different, as we say now, carriers. Some of the photos were taken on film, they are black and white, Some of them have been published and are quite popular. Pinegin also took pictures with glass. Those are color photos, and they could be demonstrated in the cinema through the so-called magic lantern. "It is an autochrome method invented by the Lumiere brothers. This is not at all what, for example, famous Prokudin-Gorsky used. Though, they are also Russian color photographs of the early 20th century, but technologically this method is different," he continued. Fragile plates The glasses are small, their size is comparable to the size of film for transparencies. The task was to digitize them and prepare for printing. This difficult work was carried out by a well-known Arctic photographer - Nikolay Gernet. He developed the entire process, and also wrote a chapter for the new book, dedicated to Pinegin as a photographer and to the process of creating photographs in the Arctic in the early 20th century. "Honestly speaking, even nowadays not every photographer is eager to join an expedition to the Arctic. Despite the fact they may use a comfortable ship, beautiful clothes, superb cameras, and everything runs on batteries. And here, imagine, is a man with an incredibly heavy camera, with last-century's equipment, and besides he was not a professional photographer - in fact, he was an artist. But judging by the journals, he was overwhelmed with joy from what he managed to capture. Such a person deserves only admiration," Nikolay Gernet said. The technology of creating images for a magic lantern required practically a sterile atmosphere. People had to wear specific outfits, the room floor was sprinkled with wet sawdust - not to allow any dust on the glass plates. Nowadays, specialists handled the plates with special care. The glass is very fragile, it was out of question to put the plates into a scanner, and the experts created a special laboratory to digitize the images. "It was important for us to show them exactly in the form in which they are, with frames, with glue wherever it has been used. We had to make a mini-photo studio with a fairly complex light system and to reshoot the images, avoiding whatever distortions, glare. The main object was the plate itself. We have enlarged the images by more than three times to make them fit the book size. To me, it was rather a challenge," the photographer added. Sedov on color images Thus, we can see in color the Arctic landscapes, which the expedition participants saw, the ice, polar poppies, the ship, and, finally - Sedov on a picture in color. Some images show everyday life scenes. On one of the pictures, the expedition members, wearing sweaters, are having tea with bagels. The Northern Maritime Museum, like many other museums in this country, has a model of the St. Foka ship. As for the structure, it repeats the original, but, the museum director continued, on the pictures they saw that the ship was of other colors, different from the images we all have seen many times. In fact, the ship had a black hull, a white top and black sails. The images show key moments of the journey, including how Sedov was leaving Tikhaya Bay on his last trip to the North Pole. Each of the 80 images has captions: those are the journal's quotes that add information or explain the photo. Next to those images are pictures of objects on the museum's collection, which are related to Sedov's expedition or which illustrate what is on the glass plate. For example, postcards that were used to raise funds for the expedition, personal belongings, the St. Foka's stern (rear end of the ship), a barometer as an addition to the picture of an improvised weather station. "Our task is to make it valuable not only for specialists, we want everyone reading the book to feel the environment," the museum's director explained. In addition to the unique images, the book publishes for the first time several other materials. For example, the authors have compiled almost a complete list of the expedition participants with names and biographies, and also a list of the crew - this aspect has remained practically uncovered. The book contains names of almost all the dogs in the expedition. During the work on the book, the authors collected a lot of visual material about Arkhangelsk in the 1910s. They worked in archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk. Pinegin's great-nieces wrote two articles. Deputy Director of Dobrolyubov's Museum Galina Dmitrievskaya (Nizhny Novgorod) presented materials from the family archives. From those archives the researchers found that Pinegin was on a popular postcard, which showed an unknown artist on Novaya Zemlya. That was even before Sedov's expedition. Another relative, Svetlana Skachkova (Moscow), wrote a chapter about Elena Pinegina, and another chapter is devoted to Pinegin's biography, since the photographer had been the expedition's chronicler. About expedition Andrey Barzenin, a researcher at the Northern Maritime Museum, has structured data about Sedov's expedition and added some new information. The task was to show the expedition as fully as possible and to remain ideologically neutral, the museum's director said. "It happened so that Sedov's historiography has been highly politicized. Reasons are numerous, and they have emerged from the pre-revolutionary times. Back in 1915, an icebreaker steamer received the name of Georgy Sedov - the country wanted to promote Arctic heroes. Later on, when the Georgy Sedov icebreaking steamer became a hero of the Soviet Arctic, it was necessary to justify the name. The tendency was to make Sedov our Arctic everything - he had a perfect biography for that. The idea was strongly fueled by Two Captains, a mega-popular book," he said. Pinegin also was among those who contributed to making Sedov popular. "[Vladimir] Wiese [a polar explorer, oceanographer, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, participated in Sedov's expedition as a geographer] in some works mentioned a realistic and somewhat distrustful attitude towards Sedov. For example, he wrote: "When I met Sedov, I realized he is a man who understands absolutely nothing about the organization of an Arctic expedition." This phrase can be found in books published in the 1930s, however, it disappeared from books published in the 1950s. With every book, Pinegin was trying to idealize Sedov as much as possible," the museum's director added. According to Barzenin, the authors "tried to avoid the cliche" in describing the course and results of one of the most famous Russian Arctic expeditions, which, though the travelers failed to reach the North Pole, made a huge contribution to the studies of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land and the Arctic Ocean. The book's circulation is 1,000 copies. Some of them will be sent to a museum in Sedov's native village (formerly Krivaya Kosa) in the Donetsk People's Republic. The museum's representatives have attended the presentation in Arkhangelsk. The Northern Maritime Museum plans an exhibition dedicated to Pinegin. The museum's experts will continue to study the photo glasses. The director told TASS, just a day before the interview, the specialists could see on a picture a bottle of perfume on Sedov's table. It was Napoleon cologne, created by perfumer Ernest Beaux, who later created Chanel No. 5 perfume, and during the years of the Arkhangelsk intervention he supervised a concentration camp for Red Army soldiers on the Mudyug Island. Photo by Irina Skalina/TASS Read more