Bookvica

[EARLY MAGADAN INHABITANTS] V Kolymo-Indigirskoi taige : Zapiski zhurnalista [i.e. In Kolyma and mIndigiir Taiga : Journalist’s Notes]

Boldyrev, S.

Moscow: Izd-vo Glavsevmorputi, 1947. Item #1460

141, [3] pp.: ill. 20x14,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Rubbed, spine chipped, light soiling of t.p. and back cover.

A witness-account about the construction of Magadan and people involved. A rare example of photo books about the Far East city. It was illustrated with photographs taken during the seven-year settlement.
Design was created by graphic artist Valerian Zhitenev (1902-1974). He moved to Eastern Siberia in 1912 together with his family. In 1918-1925, he studied in the Irkutsk art studio, then was sent to continue art education in VKHUTEMAS, the Printing Department, at workshops of V. Favorsky, S. Gerasimov, P. Pavlinov. His graduation work was a series of political posters that he had designed under supervision of D. Moor and N. Kupreianov in 1930. For a long time, the artist taught in the Moscow Printing Institute and contributed to magazines ‘Bezbozhnik’, ‘Molodoi kolkhoznik’, ‘Murzilka’, ‘Iunyi naturalist’, etc., designed books of Moscow publishing houses. For this cover design, Zhitenev combined a photograph of two workers going on a tractor across the taiga in the winter season with a handwritten title.
The book contains travel notes and photographs by journalist and writer Sergei Boldyrev (1910-1978) who moved to the Indigirka region in 1940 and wrote for the periodical ‘Sovetskaia Kolyma’. After seven years in the North, he returned to Moscow in 1947 and published his impressions about the socialist construction in the Far East.
Magadan was founded in the Kolyma region in 1929 as a settlement for gold mining workers and gradually became one of the main centers of the GULAG system. The book shows photographs of party administration buildings, glass factory, city and nature views, houses of culture, Yukaghir children and many pictures of migrants during the working process.

Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, University of Chicago and the US Department of State.

Price: $750.00