“This one was taken in 1919, of mechanics aiding in the war effort,” she said, gesturing to one of a series of photographs adorning her walls. All of them are original. She absolutely detests copies.
Tabachnikova is as likely to play the sounds of Rosemary Clooney on her stereo system as it is for her to listen to Nabokov’s books on tape, or the Amos Brothers on her aforementioned antique phonograph player.
A slender woman of petite stature and keen, intelligent disposition, Tabachnikova has been collecting these pieces for the last 19 years, ever since her first year in the United States.
She prefers pictures of groups of people, rather than single shots, because “they are of a collection of strangers united by something – schools or military units, perhaps.”
Among these are those taken of the U.S. and the Soviet militaries; a group of European children who she theorizes were rescued from Nazi-occupied territories during World War II, a German Women’s Kegel team in 1922, a desegregated American school in 1955, a group of sailors, the founders of the organization that would help form the state of Israel, and a group of American school children during the Great Depression.
“There is a very romantic moment associated with this picture of schoolgirls, taken when boys and girls were not yet integrated in schools,” she laughed amiably. “It was taken in St. Petersburg. When I received this photograph, with it came a silk handkerchief wrapped around the picture of a boy. Who that boy was, I don’t know, and it’s doubtful that anyone does now.”
Tabachnikova still has that picture of the mysterious young boy, effectively immortalizing a clandestine, young love of yesteryear.
“I have another one of an insurance company that celebrated Christmas each year,” she continued, approaching a picture hanging on the wall.
“I once had a group of girls come in to look at this photograph, who told me that their grandmother used to work there. The next day, their grandmother came in on a wheelchair and recognized her former colleagues. She was close to 100 years old.”
She has had several offers to purchase her vast and unique collection, but has declined them all – she’s more interested in a love of history and the human condition, than in whatever money the collection could bring.
She has ornaments of Soviet cosmonauts released the year Yuri Gagarin made his historic flight to space.
By her desk rests a framed copy of the original Daily News announcing the end of World War II in Europe –which she says still gives her goose bumps – and behind it, one illustrating the Nuremberg trials. In her desk, she has aged issues of Esquire magazine from the 1950s, and those of an Iron-curtain era Soviet joke magazine called “Krokodil.”
“These are not just things or rags to be thrown away – here lie the stories of people’s lives,” Tabachnikova said. “It is entirely possible to study history through this.”
