Classics of Soviet eroticism by Lithuanian photographer Rimantas Dihavicius

"Women are not people, they are other creatures" (Rimantas Dihavicius).

Rimantas Dikhavicius is a Soviet photographer and a born romantic. It was a romantic touch that helped him become the first photographer to publish a publication in the Soviet Union that glorifies female beauty. The author's album was called "Flowers among Flowers" and was presented at the international book Fair in Moscow in 1987. The collection produced the effect of an exploding bomb.

Rimantas Dihavicius recalls: "There was total censorship. This topic was banned, and not a single Western book of this kind got to the fair, not a single one. And suddenly — at the Soviet stand, at the Lithuanian... then this book was even taken inside, because the visitors would have demolished the stand. The zealots of strict morals did not attack me. It was just a surprise — not up to criticism."

Foreign experts were surprised: where could such a high level of skill come from in a country where nude photos were banned for 70 years?

Rimantas Dihavicius did not think about it. He simply took poetic, high-class photos of elusive beauty. It is not she, the photographer said, who will save the world, but we must save beauty today.

As a young boy, together with his parents, Rimantas Dihavicius was exiled to Siberia together with thousands of Lithuanians during the Stalin era. Having lost his mother, who found himself in a special school for children of "enemies of the people", Rimantas did not become bitter, on the contrary, he was looking for beauty in everything and in everyone.

"Today it is necessary to save the beauty itself, it is not in demand. This should be treasured, it should be passed on to others. That's when beauty begins to save. This ideal is scattered in people."

We present 26 of the most sensual photos from the book "Flowers among Flowers"by Rimantas Dihavicius. Russian Russian Museum presents many of these works at the exhibition "Beauty without Glamour?", which is currently taking place in the Russian Museum, dedicated to the genre of nude in Russian photography of the XX-XXI centuries.

Rimantas Dihavicius recalls: "After the exhibition, there were a lot of orders, the Chinese wanted to buy "at least" a million copies for a narrow circle of specialists. We were the big brother then for them, and if the big brother allows..."

The book has been reprinted four times. And from the photos included in the albums, an exhibition was organized, which was held in the Central House of the Journalist.

Looking through the photos of the album, the viewer gets the impression that the photographer did it in one breath: one beautiful summer he ran somewhere on the sands, saw the beauty and captured it. "In fact, I have been working on it for a very long time, for many years: I took photos myself, I printed it myself, I made the layout myself, I wrote the text myself."

"I would call what he is doing the highest class cultural resistance to consumer culture," says Tatiana Yasinskaya, an expert in the work of Dikhavicius, an art critic.

"It seems that he is engaged in fashionable things — well, what is more fashionable than the female body today? It seems that you can't sell cottage cheese without some half-naked beauty advertising it. It's insulting. And Rimantas defends the rating of high culture as best he can. He still believes that women are "not people, they are other creatures"."

The sun.

I had a dream.

Forget yourself.

On the palms of your hands.

Butterfly.

Sight.

It's noon.

Foam of days.

Collecting.

Sleeping.

The pier.

Mermaid.

Silhouette.

Lively.

Rye.

Shadow.

Light.

Venus.

Dried flower.

Curls.

The recognized photographer does not accept today's, as he put it, exploitation of the female image in art. Once the artist said: "The holy theme has become a primitive commodity. I want to get out of this sphere."

The publication of Rimantas Dihavicius "Flowers among Flowers" is still considered an example of the highest class of photographic art.