St Petersburg is the first city in Russia to have been built and developed according to a deliberate urban plan. In 1990, the historic city center was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
One of the first institutions to undertake photographic documentation of the city’s architecture was the Lenfotoshudozhnik production studio. After the war ended, it was essential to record how the city was being restored following the devastation.
A key figure in this work was Ilia Narovliansky, who photographed the city for postcards and albums. Architectural photography required a thorough, carefully prepared approach — it was carried out with a tripod and large-format equipment. Yet it would be a mistake to reduce Narovliansky’s work to mere documentation; through details and subtle nuances, the city in his photographs poetically comes to life.
Vadim Egorovsky worked for more than thirty years at KGIOP — the Committee for State Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments.
Although an entire generation separates him from Narovliansky, the disciplined conventions of architectural photography make their works appear closely related.
In Vadim Egorovsky’s photographs from 1989, we see a commitment to the principles of architectural photography, which require strict adherence to proportion when documenting elements of the urban environment.
Vladimir Antoshchenkov, an architect by training, was passionate about drawing — a pursuit that significantly shaped the development of his artistic language.
In Vladimir’s works, every element becomes animate, and the architecture, which takes center stage, is inseparably connected to everything that surrounds it: people, animals, plants, bearing the marks of both visible and invisible interactions with them.
The poetics of St Petersburg, described as early as in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, shaped a particular type of observer, someone who, in the French manner, could be called a flâneur. A flâneur wanders the city without a specific goal, guided by intuition, attentively observing their own experience of the urban space.
One such flâneur was Boris Smelov — a key figure of unofficial Soviet photography of the 1970s–1980s.
View of the Spit of Vasilievsky Island during a Flood (1980)
Epson Traditional Photo Paper
St. Petersburg Courtyard (1970s–1990s)
Boris Smelov chose to photograph the city’s old districts: Kolomna (which he was among the first to systematically document), and Vasilyevsky Island (where he lived for most of his life). Walking without a set plan, he captured not so much striking events as the state of the surrounding space and environment, searching for a way to fix the city’s unique atmosphere.
Literature and philosophy were of great importance to Smelov. Like several photographers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, he created visual interpretations of the neighborhoods described by Dostoevsky in his novels.
Saint Petersburg, 2008
Silver bromide print
Silver bromide print, pseudo-solarization
Saint Petersburg, 2001
Saint Petersburg, 2000
Saint Petersburg, 2003
Dostoevsky’s Petersburg and the Kolomna district were also photographed by Valery Degtyarev.
Together with like-minded friends, Valery Degtyarev wandered through courtyards in search of textured, atmospheric subjects. Photographing courtyards often caused concern among local residents, so working with companions was not only more enjoyable but also safer.
Boris Mikhalevkin, an electrician by training, is another major figure in St Petersburg photography. In the 1960s, he experimented with form and photographed urban scenes. It was during this period that a social theme emerged in his work — one that would eventually lead him to the renowned photo club Zerkalo (“Mirror”).
In city photography, people are often reduced to indistinct silhouettes — a figure seen from behind, or a hurried passerby who fell out of focus. Mikhalevkin, by contrast, reveals the story of urban life precisely through people — fully realized protagonists in his city narratives.
Another member of the Zerkalo photo club was Sergei Podgorkov.
It is difficult to guess from the photographs presented here, but his primary genre was hard-edged social reportage; he also documented the informal, underground life of late-20th-century Leningrad.
Sergei Podgorkov photographed major events of the time, such as the 1991 coup, as well as everyday scenes and textures characteristic of the 1990s: queues, small parks, shop signs, archways. He created an entire series devoted to ryumochnye (shot bars) and beer kiosks — establishments that flourished in St Petersburg during those years.
Public transport, outdoor cafés, and signs reading “Bathhouse” or “Cutlet Café” in the photographs function as elements of the urban environment that offer viewers clues, helping them orient themselves not only in space but also in time.
In St Petersburg photography, certain locations hold a special place in the work of many photographers. One such location is, of course, the Palace Bridge — particularly the moment of its opening.
Another site of great importance in Leningrad photography is the Summer Garden. Few photographers who worked in the city ever passed it by.
The Summer Garden was also photographed by Lyudmila Tabolina. She worked on her series from 1995 to 2005, when the garden had not yet acquired its restored appearance. Her archive contains hundreds of negatives taken at dusk and in bright sunlight, in snow and rain, with visitors and without them. Yet the artist does not photograph the garden itself, but rather its ghostly atmosphere, saturated with associations from St Petersburg’s cultural past.
In addition to the city’s landmarks themselves, natural phenomena also shape the visual code of photographing St Petersburg — the dramatic leaden sky, rain, and morning fog.
Taken together, these motifs and subjects form a kind of photographic code of the city, within which each artist searches for a means of personal expression, whether through an unconventional location or technique, a particular approach to the subject, or a successfully captured moment.
Last updated on 22.12.2025
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