Tatiana Grigorenko's story moves from her home in Queens, N.Y. to Paris, and finally lands at the College. The next chapter will take see her traveling all over Russia on a Watson Fellowship. Her parents, who both work as computer programmers, are Russian immigrants who came to the United States from Moscow around 1977. They live in her Queens hometown of Astoria, a primarily immigrant neighborhood. Here at the College, she is a French and fine arts double major who is also fluent in Russian, her first language.

Ballet and the Eiffel Tower

Grigorenko has been interested in art since high school, where she painted and practiced classical ballet. She excelled at ballet-so much, in fact, that she deferred her admission to Amherst by a year in order to pursue her love of dancing with the ballet company of the National Conservatory in Paris. "We traveled all over France and Europe performing dance pieces. That's how I became fluent in French-I never spoke English the whole time, and when my parents called, we'd speak Russian."

Grigorenko left the Conservatory because she didn't see herself pursuing a professional dance career, and wanted to start attending college. She chose not dance extracurricularly because "I didn't want to dance at Amherst on a less than professional level. It would have been too hard on me emotionally."

Grigorenko said she enjoys the intellectual stimulation of school, and is happier now that she isn't dancing. "I do miss the atmosphere of being on stage or backstage, though; it was very exciting." However, she has no regrets. "I'm a much more sane person when I'm not dancing." 

Finding herself in the dark

Grigorenko spoke of the insight she achieved through taking photographs. Her first experience with the fine arts department was during the first semester of her sophomore year, when she took Photography 1. "It was really inspiring-I was in the darkroom all the time," she said. She was reluctant to declare the major, but a friend convinced her. "I mainly photograph people, because I find that more interesting. I took a color photo class, and I had a project that involved taking portraits of people in the street, mostly in immigrant communities, like the one I grew up in. Astoria is largely populated by Greek immigrants, as well as some other Eastern Europeans, Korean ... people of all nationalities. I did this project at home and in Boston."

"I'm more interested in taking pictures of people because it makes you see something else besides what's immediately apparent. It usually ends up in random conversations, like the immigrants I photographed for my color photo project.

For her thesis, Tatiana used a large format camera, one that allowed her more options than a regular camera. "I could have some objects in focus, and make others intentially blurred," she said. The film was expensive, and because of the large size of the negatives, she could only make ten exposures at a time. "I had to set up scenes very deliberately. For my thesis, I wanted to explore the way the line between two distinct opposites could be blurred, like the line between dreams and reality, or life and death. So I set up and shot scenes that had an uneasy, uncertain feeling to them. I wanted people to question the boundaries between two extremes, and acknowledge that these boundaries are not quite fixed, that they sometimes intersect and merge." 

In one of the photographs she took, a woman is shown standing behind a table set for six, perhaps waiting for her guests to arrive. "The table was set immaculately, except ... that there's a young woman on the floor underneath the table, writhing, pushing away the table. In this image, I wanted to show the difference between outward appearances and inward reality, the contrast between what you see and what you don't." The older woman's cool, collected exterior does not, at first glance, belie her inner turmoil. After a closer look, one might just catch a glimpse of the troubled woman inside. The distinctions between the upright woman and the writhing girl are meant to be very clear: "The woman is in focus, and the girl is blurred; the woman is older, the girl is younger; the woman is neat and poised, the girl is disheveled and writhing."

Senior Lecturer in German Sigrit Schutz helped Tatiana set up this scene in her house. "We went to her place for dinner once, and I remembered she had this long dining table, and I thought, 'perfect!'"

"What I will remember most about Tatiana is the crazy photo shoot we had at my house," said Schutz. "She made me strike all kinds of poses which are actually quite foreign to me. She made me look into the room mainly with a very snooty expression on my face while standing at a formal dinner table. At the same time her friend Emily had to put her body through all kinds of contortions underneath the table. I liked the photo which she picked for her senior thesis exhibition very much, as I liked all the pictures in her show."

Trains, planes and automobiles

Grigorenko said she enjoyed the time she spent at Amherst. "My favorite courses were Photo 1 and Strange Russian Writers with Professor Rabinowitz," she said. "It had lively and interesting class discussion, and a really high level of student participation. Professor Rabinowitz was also very passionate about teaching and the material was very interesting. There was a good dynamic."

Of course, the good times extended out of the classroom as well. "One of my most memorable experiences here happened one night during exam period my sophmore year. My friend Rob and I were working on papers, and we were bored, so we decided to take a road trip to New Hampshire and steal a road sign to prove we'd been there. And we came back, around four a.m., with the sign!"

"I also remember having a pool party with my friends in front of Newport at the end of sophomore year," said Grigorenko. "All the people on Route 9 were watching us ... President Gerety came by and he seemed happy that we were having so much fun!" 

What Grigorenko likes best about Amherst is the community aspect. "Being in a sort of intellectual bubble, comfortable, sheltered from the real world. You're allowed to spend all day doing what you really want to do, as opposed to the real world where you have responsibilities and obligations."

She has plans to be a professional photographer in the future, and wants to apply to graduate school for art. "I'm interested in art photography and photojournalism-but I have to think of making a living as well. I would be willing to take fashion pictures if necessary. I just don't want to spend too much time doing that; it's not what I'm interested in."

For the Watson Fellowship, Tatiana submitted a proposal for a project that involves visiting the newly-independant countries of the former Soviet Union. She wants to interview people and photograph them about their experiences as part of the former Soviet Union, and ask them about their new identity as citizens of newly-formed countries. "After the fall of Soviet Union, much of it fell apart," said Grigorenko. "Armenia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, among others, were never independent countries; now they have to create their own sense of national identity in the wake of a terrifying past of repression and ethnic genocide. They're trying to revive their native languages, for example, which were oppressed in favor of Russian."

Professor of French Paul Rockwell remembers Tatiana, who studied at the Sorbonne in France during the spring of her junior year, as a fluent French speaker, whom he first witnessed in a performance of scenes from classic French plays that had been organized by the French Teaching Assistant Florent Masse. "Tatiana was a first-year at the time and had just given a performance in which she had spoken her lines beautifully in perfectly fluent French. Members of the department were astonished that she did not miss a line," said Rockwell. "There were very few undergraduates in the country who could have done as well. She has made a wonderful and lively contribution to the French program over the years and will be missed.

Schutz has equally fond memories of Tatiana, who took Elementary German during her freshman year. "She has a great talent for foreign languages and she learned German very quickly. She was also incredibly hardworking. I continued teaching her as an independent studies student and we discussed modern short stories. I enjoyed this very much because she is so smart and sensitive," said Schutz.

Dan Glowitz '03 has glowing memories of one of his best friends. "The first time I met Tatiana she was sunburned and hadn't showered in several days," he said. "It was the bus ride back to Amherst after our respective freshmen outdoor kayaking trips ... Sitting there talking, I got the brief impression that she was quite strong in a delicate sort of way," said Glowitz. "A few weeks later I leaned that she had danced professionally in Paris the year before, and it explained a lot of things-the idea of gracefulness and muscularity seemed fitting, both to her physical appearance and to who she is as a person."

Livia Angiolillo '04 credits Tatiana with influencing her to becomes a Fine Arts major. "I had the chance to participate in her thesis project. I was photographed for a particular image, but I did not really understand what or why I was supposed to do," said Angiolillo. "After several hours and a couple rolls of film, Tatiana had explained her idea completely and easily ... She conveyed everything to me, patiently and expertly, thus leaving me with the opportunity to simply appreciate the brilliance of her work."

Grigorenko's close friend Cheryl Fakhry '03 sums it up perfectly. "I think that what probably strikes most people about Tatiana when they first meet her is how self-confident and determined to succeed she is."