Two journeys along the Amur River

The French lady with Bulgarian name Patricia Chichmanov sets off to the far-away border of Russia and China in following the track of her fellow-countryman Charles Vapereau – 115 years later. She travels and takes pictures along the Amur – the Siberian river across which the two states have tensely stared at each other for centuries. The unique photos by Charles Vapereau and Patricia Chichmanov are published for the first time by Abitare Bulgaria.

Beijing. Amur. Paris. 115 years later

Text by Tzvetana Chipkova
Photos by Charles Vapereau, Patricia Chichmanov

Patricia Chichmanov loves roads. She prefers them to be far-away, rural, in the tundra, the taiga, in the mountains and the wilderness of Siberia or Middle Asia. The Parisian has travelled for thousands of kilometres on the insecure roads of the former USSR – by train, car, lorry, on horseback or a dog-drawn sled. She has covered the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway, the Trans-Siberian and the Manchurian Railways in a shared carriage, she is the author of the most reliable, at present, guidebook on Middle Asia. It was exactly on the road where she met Arnaud Gibault – a French collector and admirer of China; this happened in Tyva – a small Siberian republic. He gave her a present – a box of old photos whose negatives he had bought, without knowing why, at an auction in Paris more than ten years before, for 10 dollars. The only explanation to the photos says: “Siberia. China. End of ХIX century”. There is no information on the author and the places where these were taken, not to mention the people on them.
Patricia was mesmerized by the photos. After returning to Moscow, she looks at them over and over again, trying to reveal their secret. She manages to recognize some of the places – Moscow, Beijing, rivers and landscapes which are obviously in Siberia, roads. She makes out that a journey was concerned and the main personages were three – a woman of serious countenance, invariably wearing a black hat, a man with white beard and a Chinese. She imagines the route of a white-emigre family from Moscow, through Vladivostok and Kharbin in China – to France; that route was sometimes used after the revolution in Russia. She conceives the idea of organizing an itinerant exhibition in Siberia, along the supposed route of the family. Her experience has taught her that many of the small Russian towns have well-maintained local museums with competent historians who could recognize some buildings or people. She researches the most popular route through Siberia at the end of the XIX century, she prints the photos on vinyl foil so that she could exhibit them outdoors, too. However, the project fails. A dead spot again. And then, one night, Patricia is leafing through a brochure which has been around her desk for six months now – a catalogue of an exhibition of French travels in Siberia, back from the times of Peter the Great. She is amazed to spot among the illustrations a print of a woman of serious countenance, wearing a black hat, next to man with white beard and a Chinese, all of them among a heap of bags and suitcases. The secret she has been chasing for months has been right before her eyes all that time! The man from the pictures already has a name – Charles Vapereau. “As if I was struck by a lightning,” Patricia recalls. I spent the night looking up on the Internet some information on Vapereau and in the morning there was not a shadow of a doubt – in 1894, he had described his journey through Siberia in Tour du monde magazine. The article was illustrated with prints based on the pictures – some of which I was so familiar with.”
It turns out that Charles Vapereau is a Frenchman who has lived in China for 27 years. A seasoned traveller, who also visited India and America, he wrote a book about his journeys and Patricia set upon finding it. Enchanted by Vapereau’s personality, she decided to organize a photo exhibition of his pictures of Siberia. “The unique point was that enormous photos could be made on the basis of these negatives. The size of the photos in the exhibition was 80 х 100 cm. Everything was happening extremely quickly and easily all the time – the Director of the Architects’ Club in Moscow fell in love with the photos at first sight, we managed to perform the organization solely within a month, the exhibition was held successfully... right away we received an invitation to present it in Beijing, too... There, the exhibition could be seen in an old Chinese house with a garden and a gallery around it. The pictures looked marvellous at the background of the old walls. And everything seemed to happen as if by itself. Now, I have the feeling that the exhibition leads a life of its own. I simply launched it into the world, like a child that you bring up. I felt strangely connected to Charles Vapereau, I was obliged to do that for him.” The truly extraordinary fate of the exhibition continues. After its premiere in April 2007 in Moscow, now it travels through Siberia following Charles Vapereau’s steps. It is presently in Vladivostok, having passed through 15 cities in 2 years.
In the meantime, a new idea has occurred to Patricia – to cover Vapereau’s routes 115 years later and take photos of Siberia today – in Russia and China. The task now is almost as complicated as it was at the times of Vapereau. “For a year now, I have been working on the exhibition. I decided to make a portrait of the Amur River – the way you would do a portrait of a person. I was looking for Russians on the Chinese bank and Chinese – on the Russian. On three occasions, I spent there two months each time. I took innumerable photos, held lots of important meetings and I was asking myself how I could best express what I felt. I decided to make five giant panoramas at key places in this area. Their size is 9 meters by 40 centimetres – like a river, like a borderline. This is the only format which can express the sense of the Siberian space. In September, I will show them in the Schusev StateArchitecture Museum ( MUAR ) in Moscow, and in October, if everything goes to plan – in Khabarovsk, too. People there find my perspective interesting – because I am a foreigner. Neither China, nor Russia is my homeland, but they both attract me intensely. To my mind, Amur and the landscape on its both sides, even though in two different countries, is one – the land is the body, and the rivers and the roads are the blood vessels in it, while the boundaries are temporary sketches.”