PHOTO ESSAY OF THE WEEK: A Person of Rare Soul

April 27 2009, 5:45pm

This week's photo essay is a real find. Blogger katoga noticed and re-posted a fascinating article on some of Russia's most unique characters.A PERSON OF RARE SOULA buoy-man, boiler man, retoucher, chimney sweep and other representatives of endangerend professions tell Esquire Russia about their work. Recorded by Svetlana Reiter. Photographs by Sergey Leontiev.SextonBoris Nikolaevich Chijov88 years oldI've been going to services since I was a small child; I remember, they carried me in their arms to show me the archimandrite. Later, when I was five, I became a choirboy. My father sang at the kliros and I stood in the front. If I moved even an ear my father would thump me in the back. Stand quietly, so to say. I remember there was a tall teenager walking in circles at the altar with a candle, a sexton. He would hand the Father the censer, would serve him. When the teenager left, there was no one to help the Father, even the deacon died. At eight, when I started school, the priest would ask me to help him and hand him the censer. Coal back then wasn't as it is now, it would burn out quickly. So, I would take the cold coals, heat them with the candle, and make sure the censer stayed warm because wood coal is fast to cool. When I was in school, I couldn't serve at the church during weekdays, even if it was a big religious holiday. But on Sundays I would come to the morning service and to the evening service - trusty like a bayonet! In school they would scold me; they made fun of me in the student paper - "For shame! Borya Chijov is a sexton!" I would cry. At sixteen, I ended up in the war. I served three years in the infantry and then got taken prisoner in Poland. They would march our prisoner column through the heat, without food or water; those that fell behind were shot. I returned home only 1946 and by then there were almost no churches left - some where turned into nightclubs, some destroyed. The next cathedral was 20 kilometers away. But I would walk there, what else could I do? In the war, I slept next to corpses and laid under bullets and prayed. The church saved me from death. I've been with the church for 80 years. I can still walk, my arms still have strength, although it's hard to read since I'm almost blind. But I serve the Father with joy. I've been serving Father Alexander of Mishkin for nearly fifteen years. The sextons are called altar boys now, but I call myself a sexton. I am the last of my kind, I think, here voluntarily. I haven't taken a penny from the church. BoilermanVasiliy Vasilievich Riaskov44 years old My grandfather was captain of the railway service. He lived near the station. I remember I used to sleep at my grandmother's, Polina Mikhailovna. The window would be half opened and such delicious fumes would come into the room! You feel so charged, as if you've just exercised. Grandfather would let me raise the semaphore signal. That was back in 1976 but I remember as if it was the present: I would turn the wheel and far off in the distance the semaphore signal would rise. I would also climb into the cabin of the locomotive and touch the screws and levers. I so liked the locomotive; it was a warm, living thing to me. Basically, I entered the railway technical institute. Got an education and started to ride. When the locomotive puffs its steam, it's as if it's talking to you - you would listen to it, have conversations with it. If there was something wrong with it, you would feel it instantly. A boiler man is a difficult job. During the trip, you have to keep the steam going and watch so the water in the boiler stays at the necessary level. But that is so great! You breath differently, as they say, under natural conditions; coal is a natural thing, no diesel or gasoline or kerosene, no harm. Only benefits. If you get distracted, the locomotive will stagger. What does it need, anyway? Care, oil and maintenance. It gets enough oil, I can say that honestly. Maintenance is available. And care? See for yourself: right now there are two steam locomotives remaining in the entire Russia. The first one we lovingly call Lebedyanochka, the second was a war trophy and we address it as Frau Marta. We treat them like young ladies. I had a depressing period when they wanted to get rid of locomotives all together. They transferred me to an electric train. It was torture. There's nothing to do on an electric train. There's no life, no soul. No steam, no coal. No one to talk to. Later, they returned the Lebedyanochka and everything fell into its right place again.  Buoy-manAleksey Dmitriyevich Bezverhiy76 years oldThe first time I saw a buoy was in the army. I was posted directly on a bridge. So I'm guarding the bridge and from under the bridge comes a little boat and on it some buoy-men. One at the oars and one at the front; they were fueling the buoy lights. Back then, the girls loved buoy-men passionately; once they saw them, the would wave their scarfs at them. I was already married by that point. I used to go to a club with this lady, Lida Sergeyevna, and then she got a bit round so we had a wedding. I came over to the buoy-men just to check it out. So they started to insist - join us! So I thought why not and went. One downside though; they kicked me out of the army apartment quick. The pay was standard, 50 rubles. At first I would have a boat with oars for checking out the buoys, later they gave me a motorboat. Once it got dark, I would start it up, clean the buoy lights and move on. Later, they gave me a steamboat. They increased my route to fifty kilometers. So I, Alesha Bezverhiy, became a captain. I loved that steam boat. They wrote me off in 2001. I have strong arms, I can move the buoys comfortably. And the bosses respected me. But, they said my hearing lags a bit. Doctor, that serpent, at the commission said "twenty-five" and I didn't hear it. He goes, "Go work at the docks, tie the boats!" I sent him to hell, I was very disappointed. I kept my house at the docks though. Three hundred meters from the Moscow River. The youngsters frequently come by for advice. They yell: "Mitrich, come sail with us." So I tell Lida Sergeyevna: "Well, hostess, off I go to my old job." I can get in the steam boat with my eyes closed. I can sense every step with my insides. The steep and the retracted ones. I take my accordion aboard. I am, after all, an accordionist! I used to love that stuff: sailing on the boat, singing songs, so cheerful, nature all around, and from the shore, scarves are waiving.  Chimney sweepNikolay Vladimirovich Gorchakov47 years oldFirst time I climbed onto a roof was at eighteen, right after the army. This was in Lyublino, in the summer on a fine day, because there's no work allowed on a rainy day. Well, I climbed up and I see: from the top, everything looks different - better, more beautiful. The view is like from a plane. To be honest, I froze. And I had to drop the ball into the chimney, check that there's no build-up, no obstruction. They're shouting at me from the bottom: "Kol, what's up with you?" And I can't even answer. After a while, I got used to it of course. But even now I like it much better up there. It's calm there. You feel confident in yourself. You can shout as loud as you can. On the ground, I can't scream like that - they'll drag you away to a nuthouse. One downside: afterwards, you have to climb back down into the dirt. Before, in the 1970s, when we climbed around the chimneys, we used to find all kinds stuff - stowed away money, for example, the kind husbands hide from their wives. What? We would give it back to the wives. Right now we mostly service old buildings - five-story buildings with gas tanks and chimneys. Every day, there's fewer of those. And because of that, our profession is vanishing. But it's important. We are, after all, doing a dirty job with clean hands. We socialize with the tenants a lot. Sometimes, you visit a little old lady and she has no one to hang a chandelier or put a light bulb into a floor lamp. We help how we can. As a foreman, I only work with tested people. In my brigade, there's my own brother and three other trustworthy people. I even had to fire people when I'd see that the person isn't worthy of being a chimney sweep. After all, this is a gift - a job that helps you escape the tedium. You're all bellow and I - above. I feel great.  CantorMihail Yakovlevich Dubovskiy55 years oldWhen I was a little boy walking down the street with my parents, I would be a little embarrassed. Typically, they spoke in Yiddish. I remember that I would constantly look around to see if the passerby would notice - there go the jews. And now, things like this happen: a famous person, I won't mention his name, will come visit a grave. He himself is a jew, his mother is Jewish. He'll come up to his mother's grave and cross himself. And at the same time, he asks me to read him a prayer. From the Siddur. What can I do? I read. They say that before when a jew visits a grave, he would read the whole prayer himself. And now it's my responsibility, many don't know how, so I read for them. We walk to the grave and at the end of the prayer I say "Amen." "Amen," they repeat after me. And it's as if they read it themselves. This is my fifteenth year here and so they come to me for help. When I had just come here, there were three little old men here, Arkadiy Moiseevich, Meir Isaakovich, and Naum Yakovlevich, that would visit the graves with the relatives of the deceased. Now I am the only one left. The last one. Arkadiy Moiseevich left to America, Meir Isaakovich left to Israel, and Naum Yakovlevich died. I myself was brought here by Meir Isaakovich - he was my neighbor, we met in the garage. RetoucherAlexander Vladislavovich Agafonov50 years oldIn his work, a retoucher uses his own saliva. It has the right consistency - the right adhesiveness, the right fluidity. You spit in the lid, dilute it with the dye, make a few brushstrokes on the photo paper, achieve the right background tone. It's easier with black and white photography - you only need three colors - black, white, and grey. It's a lot more tedious with color - you do it with basic watercolors, it's harder to get the right hue. When I work, I turn the photograph upside down. There's a subtle point to this method: if you see the picture in the right way, you see it as a whole and ignore all the defects and details. But, you have only to rotate the picture by 180 degrees and all the defects and details become prominent. I spend an hour and a half on each photograph. Some people would find this boring, but it calms me - something like knitting. Besides myself, I don't know a single other retoucher in Moscow - it's an extinct profession. Those old men that back in the forties of the last century would scratch out a repressed Politburo member out of a photo and draw some sort of a palm tree in his place are long gone, they've left the range. After all, retouching ruins a healthy eyesight. Although, I have my own theories one this: I feel that my eyesight is only improving from the retouching process. The lens exercises.