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BY FRANK LOVECE

llru0[ow 50 camcorders captureda day in the life of the LISSRand aided a networkbrondcqst.On May 15, as Russia's 11 daybreaks slowly bloomed across itsvast time zones, a corps of 100 photojournalists began to docu-ment 24 hours in a nation that is to us as familiar and mysterious asa Dostoevsky novel. Fifty had come from the Western world, 50from Eastern Europe. What they saw would become A Day in theLife of the USSR, which was published last month as the sixthvolume in a series whose previous title, A Day in the Life ofArnerica, was one of last year's best-selling books.In an tmprecedented gesture, a Soviet government anxious totest Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness, cau-tiously blessed a media presence normally unthinkable in a countrymade insecure by centuries of invasions and upheavals. But withinthat context, the decision to allow photographers access to placesas closed as Vladivostok, home of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, andStar City, site of the cosmonaut training center, went beyond therequirements of good public relations-even more so given theastonishing fact that the Soviets allowed the Western pho-tographers to carry 50 home video camcorders on their assign-ments.

Some of the results have already been aired on ABC's20120, ina segment that ran during the summer and in a follow-up segmentin October. And there's talk of a home videocassette.But the significance of the photographers' video snapshotsprobably will be understood only after some time. Internationalrelations scholars, such as Raymond Garthoff of the BrookingsInstitute, are cautious in their assessments. "It's not simply bring-ing in camcorders that's significant but the event as a whole,"Garthoff suggests. "It represents a further opening up of theSoviet government. This doesn't mean it's opening totally orbecoming like ours, but it's a worthwhile step. "Western news crews have, of course, worked in the SovietUnion for decades, albeit under tremendous security, and photog-raphers familiar with Russia say foreign tourists have brought incamcorders before. Yet never have so many news professionalsbeen allowed so much access-83 cities and towns from cosmopo-litan Leningrad in the west to isolated Komsomol'sk-na Amurenear the Chinese border.The access was far from unrestricted-each photographer hadto have one or more interpreter/guide fromNovosti, the govern-ment press agency-and some gussying-up of sites on the itiner-ary for appearance's sake was blatant. But, as Da1 in the Lifeco-creator Rick Smolan wryly puts it, "They showed us the pretti-er prisons."

On the Tuesday before the Friday shoot, the 50 Westernphotographers were each offered an 8mm Sony CCD-V3 AutoHandycam camcorder to keep. The Soviet-sphere photographers

8mm Fronlier:Photographers DavidTurnley (left) andStephanie Maze (right)test Auto Handy-cams near St, Basil'sCathedral in Moscow'sRed Square.

70 VIDEO NOVEIV1BER 1987

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did without, since Russia uses the SECAMtelevision standard and the camcorders aredesigned for the NTSC standard, which isused in the U. S. Sony sent a training repre-sentative, Jim Rosemary, who gave 20-minute group lessons on shooting 8mmvideos. Very few refused the added oppor-tunity, Smolan recalls. Rosemary, whoworried that the photographers would seevideo as an intrusion, found that "in mostcases it was just the opposite."Indeed, the competitive throngseemed intent on showing who could crossover to video the best. Neil Slavin, a re-nowned group-portraitist and contributorlo Newsweek, Esquire and The New YorkTimes, used the camcorder to scout hisshots the day before the event. PulitzerPrize-winner Larry Price, director of pho-tography for The Philadelphia Inquirer,used it as a calling card. "When I used thecamcorder, it was easy to approach peo-ple. I just let them walk through the frame,rather than hounding them with a clicking

35mm camera."The Russian people themselves-forwhom the book was an American-style me-dia event-took the added presence of vid-eo in stride. "Like us, they were amazedby how small the Handycam was, especial-ly in Moscow, but they knew as muchabout camcorders as most of us," notesDouglas Kirkland, a Hollywood photojour-nalist whose work has graced Life, Lookand other magazines since the '60s."We have preconceived notions of howprimitive other societies are, " observesNeil Slavin. "We expect to hear, 'Oh, greatwhite father, what is this magic box from20th Century?'The Russian people don'thave as many gadgets as we do, but they'repretty sawy. They were much more inter-ested in what we were doing than in whatwe were doing it with."ON THE PROWLThe photographers fanned out from theEuropeanJike Moscow, Leningrad and

Kiev to Russia's Asiatic coastal plains, arc-tic pioneer towns and mountainous south-ern frontiers. Pulitzer Prize-winner EddieAdams became the first photo-journalist-Soviet or foreign-to shootMoscow's Vladimir Prison, the bitter inspi-ration for Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archi-felago. Inthe provincial Ukraine, Jay Dick-man of The Denaer Posl photographed astorybook farming village. Graeme Out-erbridge, from Bermuda, was assigned toshoot the autonomous Jewish republic ofBirobidzhan near the Chinese border.Virtually all the Western photogra-phers and their Novosti guides shot videofootage in addition to still photos. Most oftheir sites-long hidden from foreign eyesdue to physical inaccessibility and centur-ies of Russian xenophobia-have neverbeen more than mental images, even toscholars. Now they'll have colorvideotapes."The variety of the shots was amaz-conttnued on bage 74> -

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0rA$lll0$Tcontinued from page 72ing," marvels 20120 producer Nola Safro."We looked through hours of video foot-age. We haven't gone through it all yet. "The Soviet government did not, ofcourse, serve up the entire country carteblanche. But neither did Japan or the U.S.when they sat for their national portraits.On the other hand, Eddie Adams suc-cessfully convinced Vladimir Prison au-

thorities to let him shoot dismal, embar-rassing areas they had initially forbidden.And one of the most longstanding nyets of.all-aerial photography-was lifted for thebook."Train stations normally are out ofbounds for taking pictures. It's a securitything, " says Kirkland, who rode theTrans-Siberian Railroad to the isolated sci-entifi8 community of Novosibersk. "But Iunderstood I had permission. Yet while Iwas photographing all these everydaythings-people with suitcases, womenconductors-I noticed police officers com-

ing toward me. I gave the camcorder to myguide and asked him to tape them as theyquestioned me, which he did for a fewseconds before he got nervous and put thecamera down. But as soon as I explainedwhat we were doing and showed the policeour credentials, they said, 'Ohhh, this is forthe photo album!'They ended up salutingus. "Everything but the salute aired on20l20. So did 8mm video clips of the inside of aMoscow bathhouse, a herd of Siberianponies in the snow near Yakutsk, cosmo-nauts floating weightlessly in a water-filledtraining tank and a baby being born oneminute after midnight in Alma Ata, nearwestern China.BROADCAST BACKUPIronically, the extraordinary video ac-cess grew out of limitations imposed onABC News. "We had asked the Russiansto let us deploy four film crews," recalls20120'sSafro. "They told us that for logisti-cal reasons, they would allow only three'For tJre Day in the Life of Ameica shool,we had coverage by several dozen ABCaffiliates. But in Russia, even if my compa-ny could have afforded it, ten crewswouldn't have been enough. So we had tohave a couple of backup plans. "The first, eventually discarded, was todig up several professional video camerasand try to get some ofthe photographers touse them. The other arose from Safro'sfamiliarity with the corporate tie-ins foreach of Ihe Day in the Life books' Theprojects'sponsors ranged from such nat-urals as Kodak and Nikon to the invest-ment firm of Merrill Lynch and Apple Com-puters.Photographers' transportation andaccommodations were picked up by yetother corporate sponsors, and they re-ceived, in addition to a $50 per diem ex-pense payment, the choice ofa token fee ordonated producti. America contributors,for instance, were offered Apple Macin-tosh computers and other goodies. "I knewthat Collins promotes toys for its photogra-phers, " says Safro. Consequently, ABC, inits discussions with the publishing house'mentioned "that perhaps one of those toyscould be a camcorder."

Smolan, aware of ABC's need for cam-era coverage, asked Sony for 80 of the$1,500 Handycams-S0 for the photogra-phers and 30 for backup and for his staff.The $120,000 request met with an inscru-table silence. In desperation, Smolanturned to his friend Ed Reingold, ?izaemagazine's bureau chief in TokYo.

"Ed's a very good friend of Sony chair-man Akio Morita," Smolan explains. "Hecollaborated with Morita on his autobiogra-phy." Two days later, Sony arranged ameeting with Smolan and Cohen.

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