I will now take a step back to look at Ekaterine’s and Filonov’s life in Leningrad. In the summer of 1928 Filonov took a student, an American, Helen Huntington-Hooker. Helen was the daughter of Elon Huntington-Hooker a chemical engineer and businessman. She was travelling with her sister Adelaide, through Russia. It might seem odd that two young woman were travelling across Russia, especially being American. Adelaide wrote about her experiences and the scrapes that they got into in the August and September 1930 editions of the American “Good House Keeping” magazine.
In August of 1928 Helen started a course of study with Filonov. Helen was a sculptress and they were working together to adapt his ideas to sculpture. What is of interest to us is that she had a camera and took some invaluable pictures of Ekaterine, Filonov and Pytor.
The four pictures above are a wonderful record and it is fortunate they have survived. The originals are in a collection in Germany but they were used in the preparation of a catalogue for an exhibition of Filonov’s work.
This last picture is of Ekaterine and Helen Hooker. Because it is taken in winter it indicates that Helen stayed with the family for several months. It is possible that this caused some difficulties in the relation between Filonov and Ekaterine, her diary indicates as much. A film called “More than Love”, was produced by Russian television on the 100th anniversary of Filonov’s birth which re-enacts their life together. The film shows a very grim lifestyle and is sometimes difficult to watch.
There is one more picture which is somewhat disturbing it is the same picture as one above of Ekaterine and Pytor, but this time Pytor has been crudely edited out. Very crudely, just his head, leaving his shoulder and jacket. However where his head should be the logs of the building have been touched up quite well. This is the only picture we have of Ekaterine where she is smiling, or appears happy. The other pictures from this time, presumably taken by Helen, show her as looking very serious or even unhappy.
