Masha Ivashintsova spent most of her life taking photographs that almost nobody saw. She photographed Leningrad, her family, friends, lovers, artists, streets, animals, and herself. Most of her photographs stayed at home for decades.
Ivashintsova was born in Sverdlovsk in 1942 and moved to Leningrad as a child. She studied theatre and worked in different jobs, including as a theatre critic, librarian, cloakroom attendant, and security guard. In the 1960s, she became part of Leningrad's unofficial cultural scene.
«I am a failure».
Photography became a big part of her life. She photographed poets, artists, friends, and people she met on the streets. Photographer Boris Smelov and poet Viktor Krivulin were among the people closest to her. She was also married to linguist Melvar Melkumyan, with whom she had a daughter, Asya.
Ivashintsova used several cameras, including a Leica and a Rolleiflex. She photographed everyday life rather than trying to create a formal record of Soviet society. Children, courtyards, train stations, family members, animals, and empty streets appear throughout her archive.
Her personal life was complicated. She had relationships with several people from Leningrad's underground cultural scene and went through long periods of depression. In 1981, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and returned there several times in the following years.
She also had little confidence in her photography. According to her daughter, Ivashintsova did not think of herself as a serious photographer and rarely showed her work to other people. In her diaries, she often compared herself with the men around her and doubted her own abilities.
Ivashintsova died of stomach cancer in Saint Petersburg in 2000, aged 58. Her photographs remained in the family home, stored in the attic. The archive contained around 30,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, as well as diaries, letters, and other personal papers.
«She never thought of herself as a photographer».
Seventeen years after her death, her daughter Asya and her husband Egor found the archive while renovating the attic. Many of the films had never been developed. Until then, almost nobody outside the family knew how much Ivashintsova had photographed.
The pictures are mostly black and white. They include portraits of people close to her, scenes from Leningrad, children, animals, landscapes, and simple moments from everyday life. Some photographs also capture the city's unofficial artistic and literary circles.
After the discovery, her photographs were shown in exhibitions and published internationally. Because of the way her archive was found after her death, Ivashintsova was soon described in the media as the “Russian Vivian Maier.” Like Maier, she left behind a huge private archive that was discovered only after her death.
Ivashintsova never built a career around photography and never became a public figure during her lifetime. She kept taking pictures and putting the films away. Her attic eventually revealed decades of work that she had never believed were important enough to show.