Yefim Ladyzhensky, The Guys are Painting Well, Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

Yefim Ladyzhensky, The Harbor Pilot’s Boat , 1974, Collection of Mark Kelner and Margarita Litvak-Kelner.

Yefim Ladyzhensky On the Shore at Prokudin’s Dacha, Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

Ladyzhensky recalls how Belka, his childhood dog, pictured in the lower right-hand corner, lay down beside him, and they each “entered a deep slumber. The great light that God created on the fourth day after many a thousand years turned my body into a dry parchment, which could have become a good find for archaeologists. When I attempted to bend a joint, it sounded like dry parchment too. Only the sea, created by God on the third day, could return the previous elasticity to my skin.”

Yefim Ladyzhensky, Spring at Otrada Beach , 1974, Collection of the artist’s family.

Ladyzhensky recounts that “Lanzheron was defined as the entire seaside and the sea up to Prokudin’s former dacha, where on the narrow rocky shore a water station for Soviet workers was situated, which had formerly been the dacha ‘Otrada’, with several white fishers’ huts...The fishermen’s scows after a night’s work of catching mackerel and bullheads lay resting on the shore.”