A SOVIET PORTRAIT

'Norman Gershman photographs with his heart. Of course, he knows the craft of photography. He makes his own prints with tender care, and he collects great photographs taken by others. but, when he goes to 'Mother Russia,' something special happens inside of him, and here are some of his impressions of that emotional journey.

The beauty and importance of photography is that the images form a person's permanent visual album of memory. No one knows the mystery of another's human heart. These reveal one man's secret: Gershman has exposed his own.'

Cornell Capa
Director
International Center of Photography/ICP
New York 1986

For more on Cornell Capa and ICP...

'A SOVIET PORTRAIT is the very personal culmination of two journeys to the Soviet Union in 1983 and 1984 -- the travels of a second generation American in search of his ancestors. I found those towns where my grandparents were born...

I discovered as well the beauty and dignity of the land itself, and of its ancient cultures. The Soviet people have an abiding reverence for their land and its past.

This collection of photographs is not meant to be a narrative, and it makes no political statement. The images are admittedly -- even deliberately -- romantic in mood, for this is how I see the land and its people. The texts are in Russian and English so that I may give these pictures back to the Soviet people in return for their hospitality and generosity to me.'

Norman Gershman

1986