The Man With A Camera: Omsk Tass Journalist Alexander Chepurko
Alexander Chepurko-Tass PhotojournalistCherpurko is from the Omsk region, born in 1936. We sometimes see photo exhibitions in malls. The photos are good, but a bit trivial in a way. An owl in flight. A spiderweb in the sunlight. Granny's face in a cottage window. But I see now there is a vast difference between creative photography that plagues the internet and a photojournalist who has a purpose in life, and in a life where evolution, for once, seems to be true, only the toughest survive. Interesting that Alexander said about money: "We made good money, but I didn't do it for that. When a photojournalist does his work for money, he loses his creativity." In fact, in reading some of the excerpts from the Vechernie Omsk, I see that he had a wild ride. Here are a few experts.I didn't get a call for a month and a half, so I went to the factory where I used to work, and in a couple of weeks, I started running the heaters, but I still had nothing to do. I went to the editorial office of the district newspaper "Slava Trudu," and they immediately assigned me as a literary editor and sent me on a business trip to the MTS. I worked for about four months, writing articles, and our photojournalist was very fond of drinking, and one day, after another drinking session, he crashed his car. He was fired, and the editor told me, "There's no one to shoot, so you should go, Sanya. You're good at photography, and you'll find common ground with the camera."So I took a camera in my hands for the first time at the age of 27.It was like this. Every year, the Union of Journalists gathered photojournalists from all over the country in Moscow for a photojournalism section. The meetings were boring and full of talk. At one of these meetings, I took the floor. "Comrades," I said, "you've gathered us here and abandoned us. We're not learning anything, and we're not seeing anything interesting. They tell us that we can use a felt boot to take pictures, but you don't use a felt boot, and we have to work with whatever we can find or buy good equipment at a flea market, even if it means spending two salaries on optics. Why doesn't the Central Committee buy imported cameras and lenses for regional newspapers?"It turned out that the head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee was sitting in the audience. After the meeting, the editor-in-chief of TASS Photo Chronicle ran up to me and said, "Gather a group and come to us tomorrow." The chairman of the section took me to the party boss, and I explained everything in detail to him. Six months later, Japanese kits arrived in Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and other cities in Siberia, including a camera, four lenses, and a bag. This was a remarkable achievement for the time.Another incident happened in the Znamensky district. At that time, the Omsk Pravda sent a journalist and a photo correspondent to the districts, where they spent a week and returned with materials about the district's life. We traveled from Znamensky to a collective farm in freezing temperatures, and we had to cross a river, with a bridge 15 kilometers away. The secretary of the party committee accompanying us told the driver, "Let's go directly across the ice." We drove onto the ice, and at the top of the river, the dam broke through, and the ice became double, and our GAZ drove under the top layer and started to slide down. However, the lower ice held the car, and we were in icy water, and the driver got stuck in the cab, so I pulled him out and took him to the shore. A milk truck pulled the GAZ out, and we ran into a nearby house. We stripped naked, and the old man poured us half a glass of melted bear fat and washed it down with vodka to keep us warm. He said, "You're lucky, boys, because the river is only 14 meters deep."
Alexander Chepurko-Tass PhotojournalistCherpurko is from the Omsk region, born in 1936. We sometimes see photo exhibitions in malls. The photos are good, but a bit trivial in a way. An owl in flight. A spiderweb in the sunlight. Granny's face in a cottage window. But I see now there is a vast difference between creative photography that plagues the internet and a photojournalist who has a purpose in life, and in a life where evolution, for once, seems to be true, only the toughest survive. Interesting that Alexander said about money: "We made good money, but I didn't do it for that. When a photojournalist does his work for money, he loses his creativity." In fact, in reading some of the excerpts from the Vechernie Omsk, I see that he had a wild ride. Here are a few experts.I didn't get a call for a month and a half, so I went to the factory where I used to work, and in a couple of weeks, I started running the heaters, but I still had nothing to do. I went to the editorial office of the district newspaper "Slava Trudu," and they immediately assigned me as a literary editor and sent me on a business trip to the MTS. I worked for about four months, writing articles, and our photojournalist was very fond of drinking, and one day, after another drinking session, he crashed his car. He was fired, and the editor told me, "There's no one to shoot, so you should go, Sanya. You're good at photography, and you'll find common ground with the camera."So I took a camera in my hands for the first time at the age of 27.It was like this. Every year, the Union of Journalists gathered photojournalists from all over the country in Moscow for a photojournalism section. The meetings were boring and full of talk. At one of these meetings, I took the floor. "Comrades," I said, "you've gathered us here and abandoned us. We're not learning anything, and we're not seeing anything interesting. They tell us that we can use a felt boot to take pictures, but you don't use a felt boot, and we have to work with whatever we can find or buy good equipment at a flea market, even if it means spending two salaries on optics. Why doesn't the Central Committee buy imported cameras and lenses for regional newspapers?"It turned out that the head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee was sitting in the audience. After the meeting, the editor-in-chief of TASS Photo Chronicle ran up to me and said, "Gather a group and come to us tomorrow." The chairman of the section took me to the party boss, and I explained everything in detail to him. Six months later, Japanese kits arrived in Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and other cities in Siberia, including a camera, four lenses, and a bag. This was a remarkable achievement for the time.Another incident happened in the Znamensky district. At that time, the Omsk Pravda sent a journalist and a photo correspondent to the districts, where they spent a week and returned with materials about the district's life. We traveled from Znamensky to a collective farm in freezing temperatures, and we had to cross a river, with a bridge 15 kilometers away. The secretary of the party committee accompanying us told the driver, "Let's go directly across the ice." We drove onto the ice, and at the top of the river, the dam broke through, and the ice became double, and our GAZ drove under the top layer and started to slide down. However, the lower ice held the car, and we were in icy water, and the driver got stuck in the cab, so I pulled him out and took him to the shore. A milk truck pulled the GAZ out, and we ran into a nearby house. We stripped naked, and the old man poured us half a glass of melted bear fat and washed it down with vodka to keep us warm. He said, "You're lucky, boys, because the river is only 14 meters deep."