The closed door...

Well, some doors remain closed, as hard as you might try to open them… On my many errands through the underpasses across Kiev, I discovered a little anteroom next to some shops that traders apparently use to relax, have coffee, tea, vodka, and go about some other recreational business… When I had a glimpse through the open door, I immediately saw its visual potential (and relevance to my story). A red haired middle aged lady sat on a couch in front of a turquoise green wall reading, while another lady of similar age was doing her hair in front of a gold rimmed mirror. The room had same devotional objects and some older images on the walls and was littered with all kinds of household items (cups, nail polish, brushes, tea bags, etc.). The image was too good to be missed: it showed the daily life of these traders who must have done this job for decades and have lived in this room a similar length of time. In addition - visually - in terms of the colours I cannot even begin to describe the visual dance that these colours in this room did for my eye… Eggleston would have had multiple orgasms…

I knocked on the door, said hello in my tentative Russian and went in. I pointed to my camera, asking by sign language whether I could take some pictures, putting my best innocent and pleading look on my face. Immediately the lady shook her head and I was chased out of the room as fast as I had entered it before – accompanied by some heated Russian sentences, which I - probably luckily - did not understand…

Well, you don’t give up so easily… So I went back to the same underpass two days later with a Ukrainian fixer, having rehearsed with him a few stories why I wanted to take the picture (among them the real one, of course). But even repeated attempts and some verbal skill by my fixer did not sway these two ladies to let me take their picture. At the end, not even money swayed them my way (well, I usually don’t pay for pictures but if Eugene Richards can pay for being able to photograph a blow up, who am I to be too fuzzy about it in this situation)… I guess even my fixer was shocked by some of the verbal abuse he had to take. “пошол от сюда” was probably one of the more friendly things he had to listen to…

So the conclusion is: some doors do remain closed…the image will have to live on in my memory only.