Letters

To the Editors:

Mon Dieu!

I think Nijinsky turned over in his grave (Div. 22 MontMartre Cemetery in Paris).

The Nijinsky still-photo on page 47 in the July/August issue should be labeled "Faun from the ballet The Afternoon of the Faun."

A large sculpture of "Petrushka" graces his grave.

From a ballet buff,
Eugenia Bailey
Kensington CA

To the Editors:

The article "John Rahill's Magic Lantern," which portrays "lost photos rediscovered after 80 years" (Russian Life, July-August 2013), interests me greatly because I study similar images from the past. In addition to Rahill, several other Americans working at the YMCA in Russia during WWI walked about with cameras, recording history as they came across it.

For example, in Vladivostok, where the YMCA presence was very strong, Merrill Haskell (from Maine) took exceedingly interesting photographs between August 1919 and February 1920 (See: D.A. Ancha, V.I. Kalinin, T.Z. Poznyak, Vladivostok in the Photos of Merrill Haskell, Khabarovsk 2009).

Vladivostok is also central for the remarkable photographic work of Eleanor Pray, an American woman (it happens, also from Maine), who came to the city in 1894 and got her first camera in 1899. Some of her early photos (owned by the Arseniev Museum in Vladivostok) have also been published (Eleanor L. Pray, The Vladivostok Album, Vladivostok: Rubezh, 2012).

The texts and captions of both these books are in English as well as in Russian.

Sincerely yours,

Birgitta Ingemanson
Pullman, Washington