The exhibition features photographs created by Konstantin Lemeshev and Nikolai Bobrov.
Konstantin Lemeshev was born in Khabarovsk. After serving in the army, he moved to the Chukotka settlement of Egvekinot, where he began to take photographs. The next thirty years he devoted to the idea of “capturing and preserving the unique character of the Chukotka region and its people.”
The subjects of his works are outwardly simple, yet filled with the dramaturgy of real stories. Lemeshev’s photographs depict characteristic scenes of everyday life, revealing the traditional way of life, the beauty of the surrounding world, and the traces of the modern civilization that inevitably intrudes upon it.
Nikolai Nikolayevich Bobrov arrived in Chukotka in 1968. He worked as a chief geologist at a gold mine and wrote articles for the local press. Upon leaving his field of profession in 1969, he became a correspondent for the regional newspaper Sovetskaya Chukotka, and starting from 1970 worked as a photojournalist for Gornyak Zapolyarya, traveling across the Chukotka Peninsula and documenting the construction of the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant.
Bobrov photo reports were published in various local Chukotka and Magadan periodicals as well as major national newspapers such as Izvestia and Pravda. In addition, during the period from 1974 to 1982, his photographs were regularly broadcast on Anadyr television.
The exhibition presents works by more than seventeen photographers who captured the dynamic development of life in Russia throughout the 20th century.
The art of photography in Russia was evolving at a fast pace, alongside industrial transformation. By the early 20th century, the genre of journalistic photo reportage had become widespread, documenting the most significant events of contemporary life. Photographs from the 1930s–1950s by Arkady Shaikhet, Ivan Shagin, Georgy Zelma, and Boris Ignatovich depict the work of a silk-weaving factory, the conveyor belt at the Pobeda automobile factory, scenes of collective farm life, Komsomol geologists, and young figure skaters — all examples of the new Soviet visual language that portrayed a rapidly changing reality.
Later works from the 1970s–1990s by Igor Gavrilov, Valentin Golubovsky, Sergey Rogozhkin, and Alexander Kisnichan focus more on everyday scenes in cities and rural areas — musical performances, haymaking, textile factory workers, reflecting the evolution of Soviet documentary photography toward еmbracing the narratives of daily life.
The exhibition reveals a panorama of a nation in motion. Life gradually gaining speed and rushing forward. One after another, scenes unfold: the struggle against illiteracy, the exploration of the North, electrification, the rise of Russian aviation and automobile production, and the great construction projects, forming a chronicle of labor achievements, sporting triumphs, and symbols of spiritual and historical revival.
Among the featured authors are many renowned masters of photography, including Yevgeny Khaldei, the celebrated Soviet war photojournalist whose work achieved international fame. As an introduction to this visual narrative, the exhibition also features several early 20th-century photographs — views of St. Petersburg through the eyes of its residents in the 1900s, before the advent of widespread motorized transport.
The exhibition project “The Road to Childhood” presents more than fifty photographs from the collection of the State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO, created between the late 19th and late 20th centuries. The exhibition features works by masters of photography, including Yevgeny Khaldei, Emmanuil Evzerikhin, Oleg Mironets, Vladimir Sokolaev, Lyudmila Tabolina, and others.
This retrospective view on the theme of childhood makes it possible to trace the evolution of visual representations that tell stories of emotion, joy and sorrow, curiosity, and fascination with the world, the process of understanding its laws, and even moments of cruelty typical of adolescence. In other words, everything that defines childhood.
Children’s photography appeared almost simultaneously with the invention of the photographic process itself. Yet the most expressive it became with the arrival of the first portable cameras, which made possible to capture the fullness and dynamism of children’s lives. From that moment on, photography no longer simply presented the static portrait, but offered glimpses into the most vivid moments of that brief period of life.
Each photograph in the exhibition depicts not only the child, but also his or her social world and activity. One can look with fascination at images from the 1920s that showcase children participating in the adult education movement, teaching literacy to grown-ups as part of the national campaign for universal education.
Photographs from the 1970s–1980s, created by the masters of Soviet photography — Yevgeny Khaldei, Emmanuil Evzerikhin, and Oleg Mironets, reveal scenes of games in the courtyards, sports and recreation camp activities, days spent at kindergartens, schools, and festive celebrations. Reportage images stand alongside the more poetic and contemplative works of Lyudmila Tabolina and Vladimir Sokolaev, which explore the inner world and emotional experiences of a child. Although these photographs inevitably bear the distinctive marks of their time and culture, they always retain something timeless and universal — the image of childhood, radiant and free.
Early outdoor winter photographs and studio portraits set against painted winter backdrops are notable today for their solemn, celebratory atmosphere — ladies in elegant coats and their companions in heavy fur overcoats captured in moments of festive grace.
Old Russian and European New Year postcards gained historical significance after the Revolution, when the celebration of the New Year was banned until 1935. Once reinstated, the holiday acquired a new ideological form — joyful and optimistic, reflecting life in the land of socialism. The heroes of the first Soviet New Year postcards were skiers, skaters, dancing couples, and above all, happy children — the new symbol of the coming year in the USSR.
In the 1950s, Soviet artists favored collages featuring Father Frost, balloons, circus and fairy-tale characters; the 1960s brought the mysterious charm of winter landscapes; while in the 1970s, the quintessential New Year motif became a spruce branch beside a burning candle and a glass ornament, one of the most cherished symbols of the Soviet holiday.
Like a family album of black-and-white photographs, the New Year continues to unite relatives and friends. And just as a century ago, someone will surely pick up a camera and ask their loved ones to pose in front of the decorated tree — and Father Frost.
The exhibition project presents portraits of prominent figures in the field of arts — photographs of outstanding theatre, opera, and ballet performers, as well as playwrights and composers who made a significant contribution to Russian and world culture and scenes from renowned stage productions.
The unique collection of theatrical photography from the ROSPHOTO archives reveals the grandeur and beauty of the Russian theatre at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The second half of the 19th century can be regarded as the golden age of theatrical photography in Russia. For many years, the technical limitations of photographic equipment and insufficient stage lighting made it impossible to take photographs directly during performances. As a result, photo sessions were arranged in photographers’ studios, where artists, made up and dressed in their stage costumes, would assume static yet expressive poses that reflected their roles.
Among those who worked in such a manner were the leading masters of photography: K. I. Bergamasco, I. G. Dyagovchenko, K. A. Fischer, V. G. Chekhovsky, and others. Their works are distinguished by compositional harmony, luminous quality, and the photographers’ ability to capture the individuality of each scenic character.
The ROSPHOTO exhibition includes portraits of M. N. Yermolova, L. A. Sobinov, M. M. Petipa, F. I. Shalyapin, P. I. Tchaikovsky, and A. P. Chekhov, as well as photographs of theatrical, ballet, and opera productions such as “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades” by P. I. Tchaikovsky, “The Tsar’s Bride” by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, and “A Life for the Tsar” by M. I. Glinka. Some of the most valuable pieces in the ROSPHOTO collection are portraits of performers, created in theatre-based photo workshops and photographic studios of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Bringing together 50 works from the ROSPHOTO collection, the exhibition traces the evolution of ballet photography in St. Petersburg from the second half of the 19th to the late 20th century.
The tradition of Russian ballet photography began in St. Petersburg in the 1850s, when the Italian actor Carlo Bergamasco opened a photographic studio, whose clientele mainly included performers of the Imperial Theatres. The carte-de-visite portraits printed in Bergamasco’s studio during the 1870s–1880s depict ballerinas like Yekaterina Vazem, Maria Petipa, and Lyubov Radina, whose talent played a key role in the emergence and early development of classical Russian ballet.
At the beginning of the 20th century, classical ballet became the foundation for the development of modern dance. The radically changing appearance of dancers and the introduction of new movements by pioneering choreographers fascinated photographers. Among the featured exhibits are rare photographs of Isadora Duncan, Maria Ponna, Alexander Kaverznev, and ballerina Maria Semenova.
In the 1940s–1960s, the classical tradition of ballet photography was continued by Mikhail Gershman and Mark Paley, who worked in the photographic studio of the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre. Their brilliantly executed studio etudes portray the celebrated solo performers of the Kirov Ballet — Nina Petrova, Alexander Makarov, Tatiana Vecheslova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Konstantin Sergeyev, and Ninel Timofeeva.
A true highlight of the exhibition are the photographic series by Vladimir Zenzinov, dedicated to Leonid Yakobson’s Choreographic Miniatures Theatre (1973–1975), and a series by Rafael Mangutov, capturing the Boris Eifman Ballet Theatre in the 1980s. Both artists possessed a profound understanding of their subject and approached it with remarkable subtlety and insight.Completing the exhibition are Alexander Kitaev’s series “Stars of Ballet,” dedicated to the prima ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theatre, and selected works by Valentin Samarin.
The exhibition brings together 50 prints from the ROSPHOTO collection and presents Soviet photography of the 1960s–1980s, focusing on the individual, their inner world and social life, their pursuits, aspirations, everyday moments, leisure, and creative expression. The exhibition project reflects a time that has become legendary — a story about our parents and grandparents, our brothers and sisters, and ultimately about ourselves. After the severe trials of the first half of the 20th century, the culture of the Khrushchev Thaw opened the way for new artistic discoveries. Emerging in painting, theatre, cinema, poetry, and photography, a young generation eager for creative freedom defined the emotional tone of cultural life for decades to come — optimistic and passionate, romantic and deeply attentive to human existence in all its forms.
The exhibition features photographs taken by renowned photojournalists and talented amateurs from various regions of the former USSR. Among the featured authors are Kharis Shakhmametyev, Gennady Khudoleyev, Igor Gavrilov, Viktor Ilyin, Lyudmila Ivanova, Oleg Mironets, Boris Mikhalevkin, Valentin Golubovsky, Mikhail Razinkin, Boris Smelov, Boris Konov, Yevgeny Khaldei, Boris Ignatovich, Viktor Butra, Gennady Terskikh, and Yevgeny Pokuts.
The exhibition project is dedicated to exploring the phenomenon of amateur photography clubs in the Soviet Union during the second half of the 20th century.
Amateur photo clubs, located in community and culture centers, began to emerge in the 1950s, and within just a decade, formed a dense network across the entire country. As the photographers’ skills grew, connections between clubs strengthened, creating a shared space for dialogue, exchange of experience, and ideas. Continuing the traditions of European photographic societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by the late 1960s Russian amateur photo clubs had reached a remarkably high professional level. Among them was the ‘Zerkalo’ Photo Club, which played a defining role in shaping the artistic landscape of photography in Leningrad from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.
Named the Best Photo Club of the USSR in 1987 and the recipient of 11 gold medals at the All-Union Exhibition of National Economy Achievements (VDNKh), ‘Zerkalo’, over its eighteen years of work, gave rise to a whole generation of talented photographers whose works continue to influence Russian photography today. In addition to artistic-documentary tradition, the club cultivated two other major directions: the formalist approach, which emphasized composition, light and shadow, and reportage photography, responding swiftly to current events, including those covered in the official press. The artistic-documentary movement within the club was represented by Pyotr Lebedev, Sergey Podgorkov, Boris Mikhalevkin, Lyudmila Ivanova, Lyudmila Tabolina, Yevgeny Mokhorev, Alexander Kitaev, and Andrey Usov. The formalist school included Yuri Matveev, Sergey Arsentiev, Alexey Titarenko, Gennady Tkalich, Andrey Chezhin, Valentin Kapustin, and Dmitry Shneerson. Among the leading reportage photographers were Boris Bulgakov, Alexander Nikolaev, Anatoly Medvednikov, and Yevgeny Raskopov.
What did photography mean for people in the Soviet Union? Under what circumstances did amateur and experimental photography emerge? How did it differ from “professional” photography as a means of earning a living? What exactly were photo clubs, and what was their social function? And finally, do such creative communities still have a place today, and how does communication help an artist come into being?
The exhibition presents works by the classics of Soviet photography.
The selection, a “brief history of the development of photographic art under socialist construction”, brings together a range of widely known professional works traditionally regarded as masterpieces of Soviet photography. Among them are the series “Birth of ‘Iskra’” and “Village Komsomol Girls” by Georgy Zelma; “Parade of Athletes” by Arkady Shaikhet; “Dynamo” and “The First Tractor” by Boris Ignatovich; “The Mausoleum in Winter” by Emmanuil Evzerikhin; “Electrification of the Rostov–Ilovaisk Railway” by Olga Lander; “Construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Station” by Max Alpert; “Steelworkers” by Semyon Fridlyand; “Izvestia” by Alexander Rodchenko; portraits by Moisei Nappelbaum; and industrial photography from the ZIS automobile factory by Dmitry Baltermants, among others.
Today, we perceive these images through the lens of “retrospective historical perspective”. They carry the memory of our parents’ generation, a profound contextual depth, documentary authenticity, and a sense of tragedy. Soviet visual photojournalism — initially intended to serve the triumph of socialist realism, “a truthful representation of life in its revolutionary development”, has become for us a genuine and dramatic testimony of a distant past. The professionals who devoted themselves to ideological photography and forged a new visual language, filled documentary and reportage photography of their time with profound artistic meaning and authenticity.
The exhibition “Punctum. St. Petersburg Photography of the 1990s” presents the works of three renowned artists — Boris Smelov, Maria Snigirevskaya, and Alexey Zelensky, members of the creative association ‘Punctum’.
The group took its name after “Camera Lucida”, the seminal book by French philosopher and cultural theorist Roland Barthes. In Barthes’s definition, punctum is a detail within a photographic image that pierces the viewer, provoking an emotional response and personal engagement.
The group took part in a number of landmark photography exhibitions.The artistic paths of Boris Smelov, Maria Snigirevskaya, and Alexey Zelensky unfolded during the transformative decade of the 1990s — a transition into a new reality that called for the preservation of personal identity and cultural memory.
The exhibition features around 50 prints from the ROSPHOTO collection, created between 1990 and 1998. These works immerse the contemporary viewer in the atmosphere of the 1990s and showcase images that have since become classics of photographic art.
Photographers seek a visual texture for self-expression in the urban landscape, while also attempting to decipher and capture the elements that form a city’s atmosphere and spirit.
The exhibition “Fifteen Minutes to the City Center” brings together masters of photography such as Ilya Narovlyansky, Boris Mikhalevkin, Vadim Egorovsky, Vladimir Davydov, Valery Degtyarev, Alexander Kitaev, and Lyudmila Tabolina, among others.
The works span the period from the 1950s to the 2000s. On the one hand, the timeline already feels like “history,” on the other hand, it remains close and tangible, connected to the present moment where the viewer stands.
The exhibition covers more than fifty years of urban photography. Each image invites reflection on what is happening beyond its idealized views, while keeping in mind the historical context in which it was created.
Ilya Narovlyansky took photographs of a city that still bore memories of the Siege; Vadim Egorovsky worked in an era when the visual code was shaped by the Soviet press and the creative environment of youth photo clubs; Vladimir Davydov, in turn, captured the urban landscape of the 1990s.
Many motifs and compositional choices recur throughout the exhibition, revealing a recognizable canon of photographing St. Petersburg — one that transcends decades and connects the practices of different artists. Yet, within the subtle differences between similar scenes, we discern each photographer’s individual style and visual language.
Ultimately, what unites all of these authors and connects them with us is their quiet wandering through the city center, observing its unhurried daily life against the backdrop of mesmerizing architecture and ever-changing historical circumstances.
Last updated on 11.11.2025
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