It is very clear from the prefatory poems, from the introduction and from the dedication to Edward Steichen, that [Yevgeny Yevtushenko's Invisible Threads] is a book with a purpose. In the introduction, Yevtushenko says what a revelation he found Steichen's The Family of Man photographs at the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1957. They were "like a gigantic poem by [Walt] Whitman, written not in words but with a camera. Through Steichen's photography, the invisible threads binding one nation to another had been made visible." The impact of Steichen's images of real people from different countries seemed to shatter the abstract clichés of the Cold War.

When he saw that his own poetry was aiming at a wide audience, and especially at people who were not normally poetry-readers, it was a natural step for Yevtushenko to take up photography with its "potential as an international language"….

A few...