|
Ilya Il'f in the United States: Presentation outline In Russia of the 1920s and 30s, photography was very popular with people of many different professions, including writers and journalists. Aleksander Rodchenko wrote, "A lot of writers are taking pictures now. We could mention Il'ia Erenburg, Sergei Tret'iakov, Leonid Leonov, and many others." They practiced photography eagerly, seeing it as a specific kind of creative work. The fixation of a certain moment by the means of photography was much easier than by means of the word; photography allowed the necessary details to be resuscitated in the memory more clearly and vividly. The present talk is dedicated to the writers' trip to America, which took place seventy years ago in 1935. That was when normal relations between the Soviet Union and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's government were being settled for the first time. Il'f and Petrov, the authors of two famous novels, as well as stories, feuilletons and screenplays, went to the United States as correspondents of Pravda, the central Soviet newspaper. It's even tempting to exclaim bombastically, "Stalin is sending Il'f and Petrov to the land of Coca-Cola!" Soviet Russia had a tradition of relating critically to capitalist America, in the spirit of the descriptions of the proletarian writers Maxim Gor'ky and Vladimir Mayakovsky. We don't know what orders Il'f and Petrov received as they left Moscow, but in their book we don't find a trace of any attempt to subject the United States to hostile criticism or to write a satirical expose of America. The goal of these essays is more constructive and reform-oriented: to understand the positive and negative qualities of American life and to take certain accomplishments of that great industrial power back to their own country. In New York, a month after their arrival, the writers said, "We came here especially to get to know the country as well as we could." (In contradistinction to their Soviet predecessors, Il'f and Petrov wanted to show not "an iron Mirgorod" and not "the city of the Yellow Devil," but the real, or one-story, America with its real Americans, neither exaggerating or discrediting them. Il'f's photographs express these intentions.) You can see how many impressions engulfed the aliens from the land of socialism from their book and their photographs, letters, and journals. The writers were in America for almost four months and spent two and a half of them traveling around the country, crossing it from one shore to the other. There's a saying in Russian, "So, you've discovered America!" which means what we mean when we say in English, "Big deal! Tell me something I don't know!" However Il'f and Petrov's book and Il'f's photographs are their search for the real America, their "discovery" of America. They wrote, "Americans get angry at Europeans who come to America, enjoy its hospitality, and then criticize it. [...] But we don't understand that phrasing of the question, to criticize or to praise. America isn't the premiere of a new play, and we aren't theatre critics. We just put our impressions and opinions of the country on paper." His photographs can't be considered photojournalism. At first glance they present a mosaic of random pictures, situations and objects. But nevertheless, they show the characteristic features of American life. Il'f's photogrpahs could be compared to the work of Walker Evans, the American documentary photographer famous for his photographic essays on life in poverty during the Great Depression. We already know the fate of a person with a camera who goes to a new country! At first he eagerly snaps everything he can, just to remember it all, and then he is more selective and more demanding. He begins to judge his pictures, to compare possible shots. Some things charm him, others make him laugh; he approves of some things, and doesn't approve of others; and sometimes he's actually jealous: this wouldn't be a bad idea for us to think about doing! It goes without saying that Il'f's photographs can't entirely replace all Il'f and Petrov's thoughts about America - those are contained in the book. But the photographs as such speak for themselves. On the fifth of December, 1935, Ilf promised his wife in a letter: "I'll be taking home a great many photos, which will help you understand my confusing stories. Right now I already have around a thousand pictures." Right after his arrival in New York Il'f wrote home: "I live on the twenty-seventh floor, you can see the whole desperate city from here. Of course, no photograph can give you a sense of what it's like." But they can help! Without photographs, the coauthors could hardly have remembered the complicated construction of New York, which is described this way in the book: "In the morning, when we woke up on our 27th floor and looked out the window, we saw New York in the transparent morning fog. It was the so-called peaceful village scene. A few white trails of smoke rose up into the sky, and an idyllic metal rooster even capped the spire of a modest twenty-story hut. The sixty-story skyscrapers which seemed so close to us last night, were separated from us by at least a dozen red iron roofs and a hundred tall chimneys and dormer windows... New York opened out on several levels at once. The highest level was occupied by the tops of the skyscrapers... They were crowned with spires, glass or gold cupolas burning in the sun, or little towers with big clocks. {...} On the next level, totally open to our gaze [...] we could see flat roofs on which a smallish one-story house sat with gardens, sickly little trees, small brick alleys, a little fountain and the straw chairs we usually have at the dacha. [Tracks for the elevated train] took up the next level of the city of New York. The elevated tracks rest on iron posts two or three stories high and only rise up to five or six stories high in a few places in the city. To see the last, fundamental level of the city, the street level, we had to lean out the window at a right angle and look straight down. There, like in reversed binoculars, we could see an intersection with little automobiles, pedestrians, newspapers thrown on the asphalt and even two rows of shining buttons, laid down in the place where people are allowed to cross the street. As early as the day they arrived, Il'f and Petrov understood that "there were too many impressions for the first day. You can't take New York in such large doses." Not long before they left the United States, Petrov wrote home: "I am so packed full of impressions that I'm afraid to sneeze: I'm afraid I might lose some of them!" Il'f and Petrov, with their unimpeachable taste, were able to select what was most important. And, just as their American impressions eventually took shape in the elegant composition of the book One-Story America, Il'f's photographs also fall into several series, which we can call "The Road," "Automobiles," "Towns Large and Small," "Advertising," "People and Places," and so on. SERIES ONE: THE ROAD Russia has always had a problem with roads. Therefore the ideal American highways and freeways immediately captivated the traveler's rapt attention. They wrote: "The road is one of the best things about American life. And it is a part of life, not just a technical feature." "America rests on a big highway. When you close your eyes and try to resurrect in your memory the country where you spent four months, you imagine not Washington with its gardens, columns and a complete set of memorials; not New York with its skyscrapers,poverty and riches; not San Francisco with its steep streets and hanging bridges; not the mountains or the factories or the canyons; you remember the intersection of two roads and a gas station against the background of power lines and billboards." The concept of the "automotive highway" connects the idea of "just a road" with the car, gas stations, automotive shops, roadside advertising and road signs. Il'ia Il'f took an endless number of such photographs. SERIES TWO: TOWNS LARGE AND SMALL Why do Il'f and Petrov call America "one-story America"? What about the skyscrapers?! The writers patiently explained: "America seems to be a country of skyscrapers to a lot of people. ... But those belong to New York and Chicago. In New York there are a whole lot of skyscrapers. In Chicago there are a few less. In small towns there are none at all." They wrote a lot about New York, but for now we can get by with just a few words: "New York... rattles and flashes better than any storm. It's a torturous city. It forces you to look at it all the time. Your eyes hurt from looking at it. But it's impossible to stop." But, again, why is the book called One-Story America? Because, the coauthors answer, "America is primarily a one- and two-story country. The majority of Americans live in small towns." "This is America for you!" "In America there are a few cities," they wrote, "that have their own unique face: San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, or Santa Fe. [...] But almost all the rest of American towns look so much alike that they're like twins whose own dear mother can't tell them apart. This faded and faceless accumulation of brick, asphalt, automobiles, and billboards stimulates only a feeling of annoyance and disappointment in the traveler." "What luxurious names!" the satiricists exclaimed. "Syracuses, Pompeii, Battavia, Warsaw, Caledonia, Waterloo, Geneva, and Moscow. . . a purely American Moscow." "There's a Moscow in the state of Ohio, and there are two more Moscows in two other states. On the whole, every state has the absolute right to have its very own Moscow." SERIES THREE: ADVERTISING The citizens of the Soviet Russia of that time simply didn't have any basis for understanding the fantastic dimensions of American advertising. For even in the 1950s, what you could with a large stretch of the imagination call "soviet advertising" consisted of information in rhyme: "Preserves and jam make a happy man!" or "If in the morning coffee you drink, all day long you'll be able to think!" There were also exhortations: "Drink Soviet Champagne!" (Not hard since there wasn't any other kind back then.) But here in New York... They wrote: "Broadway, lit by a million, or maybe a billion electric light-bulbs, filled with whirling and jumping advertisements made of whole kilometers of colored gas-filled tubes, appeared in front of us as unexpectedly as New York itself appears in the limitless emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean." "It's important for the customer to read the advertising. It will work in its own good time, like a slow-acting eastern poison."
An ad for Coca-Cola:
SERIES FOUR: PEOPLE AND PLACES In America Il'f and Petrov met a lot of people, both famous and not. They made the acquaintance of writers, they met Hollywood directors, and they attended concerts by famous musicians. They saw Henry Ford and visited Edison's lab. They chatted with American engineers who had worked in Russia on the construction projects of the first five-year plan, and with Soviet specialists who had come to America to work and learn at Ford's factory. They talked with workers, farmers, and missionaries, they picked up hitchhikers, they saw also the poverty of Indian tribes and the black sharecroppers in the southern states. ROUBEN MAMOULIAN, Hollywood film director, and Il'ia Il'f (on the left). He was the director of Broadway hits like Porgy and Bess and Oklahoma! In Hollywood he directed films like the Song of Songs, Jekyll, Queen Christine, and We Live Again. LEWIS MILESTONE, the director of "All Quiet on the Western Front," and Petrov on the left. THE WRITER UPTON SINCLAIR. From Il'f's letter home about their meeting with Sinclair: "recently he was a candidate in the California gubernatorial election and he almost won. Sinclair is the creator of a new movement called 'Let's End Poverty in California.' <...> He was very glad to meet us and kept saying that he'd never laughed as hard as he did when he read The Golden Calf. He invited us to his home and gave us three of his books." In their travels throughout the country Il'f and Petrov had the ideal traveling companions: they had been looking for "an angel without wings" and found him in the person of the Trone family, who go by the name of Adams in the book. Florence is called Becky, the "courageous driver," who didn't get out from behind the wheel of their hardy little Ford for two and a half months. Mister Adams, that "Mister Pickwick" with an enormous amount of life experience showed them America and told them about it. NEW AND INTERESTING THINGS Il'f pays special attention to whatever seems unusual, unexpected, funny, or shocking to him. Or important. Or interesting. Or just pretty. Climate Best by Government Test.Il'f and Petrov wrote: "Signs are placed next to the entrances into town. Exactly like they are over the entrance of a store, so that the customer knows what they sell there. "Redwood City!" And a caption in verse: "Climate Best by Government Test." Revolution is a form of Government Abroad. "Some benefactor of humanity had placed the following dictum on the road: "Revolution is a form of government that is only possible abroad." The writers noted with irony, "Americans are used to believing advertising." Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. "A technical masterpiece... Engineers should get on their knees and cry tears of joy at the sight of this wonderful construction." Boulder Dam, called the Hoover Dam after 1947. In 1935, this was the biggest hydroelectric power station in the world - or would be as soon as it was finished. The Grand Canyon. "The spectacle of the Grand Canyon has no equal on earth. And in fact it didn't look like Earth. The landscape overturned all our European concepts, if we can say it that way, of the globe." Cross Section of a Sequoia. Ilf wrote in his letter: "A few sequoias, the oldest ones, have names. This tree is called the "General Sherman." The Monument to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Hannibal, Missouri. On Cardiff Hill in Hannibal "stands one of the rarest monuments in the world: a monument to literary characters. Tom Sawyer is on the right and Huck Finn is on the left, holding a dead cat by the tail." Historical Markers: Tom Sawyer's Fence, Hannibal. This fence "is a replica of the fence that Tom Sawyer let his friend whitewash in exchange for an apple." A cross in San Diego. This cross next to the Spanish mission was erected in honor of the monk Junipero Serra, who seized this land "in the name of God and the Spanish King." Gloria Swanson's star on Hollywood's Sidewalk of Stars. In one of his letters Il'f' wrote: "Next to the hotel I'm staying in there is a movie theater decked out like a Chinese restaurant. At the entrance there are slabs of concrete with the footprints and handprints of movie stars of both sexes and other such vulgar displays." THE NEXT SERIES: IL'F'S NOTEBOOKS, ILLUSTRATED While he was in America, Il'f, a journalist, kept up his established habit of writing down his impressions in his notebooks: "If you don't write down what you see every day, or even twice a day, then everything flies out of your head straight to hell and later you won't be able to remember a thing." These photographs illustrate his notes: The approach to America. Skyscrapers float up like columns of smoke. A walk through New York. The streets are just like any other, but once you look up you see exactly which city you're in. A possessed city. The Empire State Building rose up cold, noble, and clean, like a chunk of artificially-made ice. Central Park is a park where cars go to take walks. Heavy buses fly to Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles all night. Among the millions of cars I also flew by, a grain of sand caught up in the gasoline storm that has been thundering above America for many years. This is Texas, where the cowboys chase their cows, which are small, shaggy, and mean, like dogs. In San Francisco: I attended a football game. It was a good match and the audience was very pleasant. People yell, squeal, and joke around. I drove around Louisiana all day today. The scenery here is wonderfully pretty, soft and nice. If a tree stands over the road, then it's such a big old fuzzy and nice tree that it could only grow in good literary soil. Almost every page of Il'f's notebook could be illustrated with a corresponding photograph. In 1936, Rodchenko wrote, "Il'f brought a lot of photographic material back with him. Part of it is being printed in the magazine "Ogonek," part of it will be used in a photographic series being put out by the Photographic publishing house, and part of it will remain in the authors' archive. "American Photographs" will probably come out in a book edition..." Evidently those were the plans in those years. These plans were never realized; Il'f's photos never appeared in a series by the Photographic publishing house, and "American Photographs" were never reprinted. The publication of One-Story America in 1947, with 150 photographic illustrations by Il'f, was immediately, if unofficially, banned: the Iron Curtain already separated our two countries from each other. With the Moscow publishing house "Text" I prepared an edition of One-Story America for publication with eighty photographs, the letters of Il'f and Petrov to their wives "from beyond the ocean," and letters from readers who read the American essays in 1936-1937. The book came out a year ago. Five years ago Il'f's two voluminous American diaries were published in the first complete edition of Il'f's notebooks. To conclude I'll say that not long after their arrival in New York, Il'f and Petrov wrote a delightful story with a grotesque flavor for an American magazine. The story was called "Columbus Approaches the Shore," and it included this paradoxical assertion: "The fact that you discovered America means nothing. The important thing is that America discovers you." Seventy years ago, Il'f and Petrov "discovered" America. If this "discovery" was interesting for you, then allow me to hope that now, through you, America has "discovered" Il'ia Il'f, not only as a writer, but as a photographer. Alexandra Il'f, 2005 |
| home | contact | site map | |
 | |
About Ilf&Petrov
Exhibition
Papers&Participants 
Snapshots
Links
|
|
