A brilliant glimpse into the life of the larger-than-life personality of Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871 -1919), his family and friends some 90 years ago. Andreyev was a man of many talents not the least of which was taking hauntingly succesful photographs (using the rare Lumière's Autochrome Proces. This great monograph includes the selection of over 80 color prints taken by Andreyev in the years preceding the Bolshevik slaughter, plus the well-written biographical text written by Richard Davies (who draws a fine backdrop to Andreyev's time, life and artistry...)....
The rarity of this marvellous picture book is a pity as Leonid Andreyev definitely deserves much wider acclaim as one of the early 20.century photographic geniuses. His work is more focused in the comparison to "Witkacij" Witkiewicz (1885 -1939) -another profusely gifted pre-war European poet-photographer-painter polymath type.

Leonid Andreyev was the last great writer of pre-revolutionary Russia. He was also a pioneering photographer, working with the autochrome color process. This book is a collection of his personal photos of his family and friends, at his estate on the Gulf of Finland and also abroad in Italy. It is amazing, seeing pictures from about ninety years ago that look as though they were snapped yesterday.

Andreyev looks every bit the artiste here, with his mane of jet-black hair and trim, elegant beard, practically gazing a hole right in the negative. He caught the personalities of his subjects in a way that this amateur can only envy. He even captures the pain and resentment in the faces of his two live-away young sons. The landscape photos he took of the surrounding area make for rewarding viewing, too. A motor launch on a calm body of water, a back view of himself surveying the frozen sea, his garden in spring and winter, his hulking timber-frame home at sunset...amazing.

But what really bridges the decades are the views of Marseilles and Rome, in the decade before World War I. Looking at color photos of people in turn of the century garb, standing in places where jeans- and Lycra-clad tourists throng now, really brings the past back with almost shocking immediacy.

If you can, compare this book with _Photographs for the Tsar_ by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. That book is also a collection of color photos from before the war, though it is a collection of Russian postcard views for the edification of Tsar Nicholas II. It makes quite a contrast with the powerful personality evident in Andreyev's vision.