Artur Bolzhurov
Artist Interview - Artur Bolzhurov
It looks like you began your working life in the family business. Your father was a photographer.
I never thought I would become a photographer. I liked flipping through photography magazines because they had beautiful people in them. When I was a little boy, I remember my father developing negatives in the bathroom of our apartment. Later he became the head of the darkroom at his place of work. I would sometimes go there and watch the birth of a photograph on paper. After
five years of studying philology at university, I didn't want to work in my specialty. My university program lacked creativity. I started helping my father. I was his errand boy. I processed his photos. And soon I got a job as a photographer at the Museum of Fine Arts. My father was given a second digital camera. It became mine. And I started taking pictures.
What was it like to work with your father? For many of us that would mean endless conflict.
My father is an intelligent and gentle man. When he gave me knowledge, he did it carefully. He is an artist by profession. He is friends with many creative people. I was familiar with this bohemian environment from childhood. Of course, my father taught me a lot of things. The basics of photography, and then more. Helping him in his work was easy and interesting for me. The photographic life was to my liking.
You grew up in Kyrgyzstan at an "interesting" historical moment.
I was born, and still live very happily, in Bishtek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. I remember the Soviet Union, its last years. The time after the collapse of the USSR is considered very difficult. But my childhood and youth fell in this decade, so it remains in my memory as the best time in my life. I had everything usual, like all children, and I grew up a happy child. Talented in some ways. In addition to high school, I went to art school and, for a long time, I practiced taekwon-do. In my teenage years, I was fond of guitar. During my university years, I played in musical groups.
Talk about your formal photo training. Your work is so well seen and well-made. How did you get to be so good?
It is known that in art and real creativity, learning never ends. There is no specialized education as a photographer in our country. All photographers were self-taught in some way. At least up through the early 2000s. But I graduated from art school with honors: drawing, painting, composition,
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