Pyotr Otsup's office photos of Lenin

Stories of Iconic Lenin Photos #1

From the Soviet Sputnik Magazine in 1969, the first in a series of looks at the background of several famous, iconic photographs of Lenin.

Text:

An album produced by the Art Publishers and entitled Lenin in Photographs is thought to be the first large collection of pictures taken of the leader of the October Revolution. In it Leonid Volkov-Lannit has brought together many obscure facts. These 130 photographs recall the events in the Smolny headquarters of the revolution in Petrograd (now Leningrad). The book also tells the story of the first Soviet photographers and cameramen who photographed Lenin in those epic days.

Pyotr Otsupa (July 21, 1883 – 23 January 1963) - Otsupa is now more commonly translated in English to Otsup

Pyotr Otsupa who left some 40,000 negatives, including 35 rare photographs of Lenin, wrote, 'With my clumsy big wooden box I shoved myself into every door, fixed my tripod, got under the black broadcloth cover and, completely out of place in the midst of a serious session, filled the room with the thunder and smoke of my home-made flashes. I was politely asked to move through one door, but obsessed by the idea of recording all key events, I came back through another."

Soviet journalist Boris Galin, 1969:

I can remember Otsupa when he was getting on in years and later as an old man with an intelligent, lined face. But as I look at his pictures I see him as a young Press photographer of the revolution. I can see him entering the Kremlin with the cumbersome equipment he seemed to carry wherever he went. I can see him choosing the place to set up his camera in the study of the Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars. I see Lenin helping him to move aside a potted palm to let in more light and then, while Otsupa is fixing his tripod and camera, I see Lenin become engrossed in reading Pravda. That was on October 16, 1918. Lenin was oblivious to the photographer's presence: with his head bent forward he went on reading, then he raised his head, apologised for the delay, and asked for the photographing to begin. Otsupa took a few more pictures. But the Chairman's eyes remained serious and thoughtful—the newspaper's report from the front had filled him with concern...

With H. G. Wells:

Lenin's meeting in the Kremlin with H. G. Wells is perpetuated in another study by Otsupa, on which the author of the album comments, "Hardly any other picture in this whole collection conveys so expressively Lenin's stances, gestures and facial expression."

See also: Photographing Lenin: Pyotr Otsup