1997 Taking a Photograph in Kyiv's Besarabsky Market

 

I was in Kyiv for a week in 1997, hosted by a local family living in the suburbs. I had come as a stamp dealer, hoping to buy material at the weekly meeting of the collectors' club.To get to the local Metro station by the shortest route, you walked along the tracks of the main overground railway line and simply stepped to one side when you saw a train approaching or heard one behind you. I always carried a Pentax SLR back then and took many black and white photographs in the city streets but also inside the central covered market in Kyiv, the Besarabsky.

 An old man who could have been a war veteran or just someone with a hard life came up and pointed to himself to indicate that he wanted his photograph taken.  I moved close and raised my camera but he gestured with a line across his waist - he wanted a half-portrait. I moved back and knelt on the ground. He crossed his hands in front, shopping bag dangling. My student interpreter asked for his address so that he could be sent a print but he waved the request aside and walked off. He hangs now in the hallway of my flat, the first photograph on the walls as you enter.