Sergey Falin

Sergey Alexandrovich Falin was born on November 2, 1955, in the village of Kutani in the Tver region, where his mother had traveled to stay with relatives at the time of his birth. He became interested in photography in the fifth grade, when his parents purchased a Smena 8 camera. He learned the basics of photography on his own, studying one of the many popular manuals for amateur photographers, a book by D. Z. Bunimovich. By the age of fourteen, this hobby had developed into a serious interest, requiring deeper knowledge and practice.

At the age of fifteen, in 1970, Sergey joined the Leningrad City Photo Club at the Vyborg Palace of Culture, where he attended lectures on aesthetics as a non-degree participant, listened to presentations, and took part in exhibition reviews and discussions of creative projects. Upon turning sixteen, he was officially admitted as a member of the club.

At one of the club meetings in 1971, Falin met the young photographer Leonid Bogdanov, who had recently returned from military service and was then leading a children’s photography group at the Palace of Culture of Food Industry Workers. At Bogdanov’s invitation, Sergey began attending the group’s sessions. Regular access to a photographic darkroom, along with Bogdanov’s guidance, allowed Falin to develop strong technical skills in photographic printing.

It was also within this circle that he became acquainted with a group of Leningrad photographers, including Boris Smelov, Boris Kudryakov, Olga Korsunova, and Oleg Poleshchuk, who often gathered informally in the club’s space. Within their circle, this “popular place in the city center” came to be known as Lavka (“The Shop”) and, until 1980, functioned as an alternative venue to the officially sanctioned Leningrad photo clubs.

The life of the Vyborg Photo Club in the early 1970s played a decisive role in shaping Sergey Falin as an artist. A strong influence came from exhibitions by young yet already established members of the club — G. Koposov, L. Sherstennikov, O. Polishchuk, S. Timofeeva, and O. Makarov — held at the Vyborg Palace of Culture during this period.

In 1973, Falin was conscripted for military service. He served as a crane operator in construction troops but continued to pursue photography. During his service, he took photographs for the replacement of Komsomol membership cards, made portraits of fellow servicemen for their discharge albums, and created personal photographic sketches of army life.

After returning to Leningrad in the spring of 1975, Falin, with the support of Leonid Bogdanov, was employed as a photographer in the photo laboratory of the Lesgaft Leningrad State Institute of Physical Culture. However, his стремление к образованию led him to enroll in the film and photography department of the Leningrad State Institute of Culture named after N. K. Krupskaya, where he studied under G. L. Aronov. There he explored directing, film history, and the basics of screenwriting and acting.

At the same time, Falin continued to attend photo club meetings, gatherings at Lavka, and to work in artistic photography. In the autumn of 1976, he held a joint exhibition with Leonid Bogdanov titled “Summer Garden” at the Vyborg Palace of Culture.

In 1977, he visited an exhibition of American photographer Ansel Adams in Moscow, held at the exhibition hall of the Moscow United Committee of Graphic Artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street. Adams’s work had a profound influence on Falin, inspiring him to work with large-format cameras and prompting him to design and modify various camera models to suit his creative and professional needs.

In 1978, another significant event took place. The well-known Lithuanian photographer Vitas Luckus visited the Vyborg Photo Club. During a creative meeting, he presented striking and unconventional works made with a wide-angle lens, photomontages, and an author’s book dummy composed of multiple parts. What Falin saw made a strong impression on him and led him toward intensive experimentation with creative printing techniques.

After graduating in 1980, Falin received a qualification as head of a film and photography studio. He was assigned to the position of head of the photo laboratory at the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography named after N. K. Cherkasov. The following ten years of work there became the most productive period of his artistic development.

Falin’s first solo exhibition took place in 1980 in the foyer of the institute’s studio theatre. The spatial installation, conceived by Enver Baikeev, Falin’s fellow student at the Institute of Culture, consisted of intersecting ropes on which his experimental photographs were suspended in a deliberately non-linear arrangement. This display not only echoed the exhibition’s title, “Knots for Memory,” but also pushed it beyond the conventions of traditional photographic presentation.

The exhibition provoked mixed reactions within the Leningrad photographic community. However, a feature on Leningrad television in the program Rakurs gave it wider visibility and made it a notable event in the city’s artistic scene. Falin’s collaboration with Baikeev marked the beginning of a series of experiments with photographic imagery. At different times, photography served as a basis for collages and objects, was transformed into painterly surfaces through extreme enlargement, or hand-colored with oil paints.
By 1983, Falin had prepared his second major exhibition, To the Music of Vivaldi. Its premiere took place at the Theatre Institute, and in 1984–1985 the exhibition was shown at various venues in the suburbs of Leningrad, including Lisiy Nos, Olgino, and Kolpino. Later, Leonid Bogdanov introduced both the artist and the project to the publishing house Aurora. The exhibition was well received and marked the beginning of Falin’s collaboration with one of Leningrad’s leading publishers.
In 1986, his third solo exhibition, The Magic of Transformation, was presented at the Advanced Training Courses for Cultural Administrators. The show included around 200 photographs created using solarization and was посвящена St. Petersburg, whose elusive character was emphasized through transformations occurring during the photographic process — “when the result differs from what the artist initially saw and intended.” In 1987, the photo club Zerkalo hosted the last major presentation of Falin’s work before a long hiatus. He stepped away from artistic photography to focus on professional work in publishing and printing.
In the second half of the 1980s, while continuing his duties as head of the institute’s photo laboratory, Falin also worked as a photographer at the Theatre for Young Spectators. During this period, he began producing photographic work for publishing houses in Leningrad and Moscow. In 1985, after two years of work, the Moscow publisher Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo released the album Nikolai Nikogosyan. In 1986, the Leningrad publisher Khudozhnik RSFSR issued the book Kargopol Clay Toys, while Sovetsky khudozhnik published the album The Art of Armenia. In 1990, Aurora released the photo album Leningrad: Art and Architecture, which brought together works by photographers of different generations; Falin’s photographs occupied a significant place in this publication.
In 1991, following staff reductions, Falin left the Theatre Institute and joined the editorial board of the magazine St. Petersburg (UNESCO), also becoming a member of the International Union of Graphic Artists of UNESCO. Between 1994 and 1996, he founded and headed the advertising agency Photo-Art-Contact, where he also worked as a curator, organizing an exhibition of the agency at the Central Exhibition Hall Manege.
Since 1999, Falin has worked as an independent photographer. Beginning with the solo exhibition Positive / Negative, organized by the artist at the PHOTOimage gallery in St. Petersburg in 2000, his work returned to the exhibition circuit.
Recognition of the significance of Sergey Falin’s artistic legacy came with a юбилейная exhibition organized by the State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO in 2006. Dedicated to the artist’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition featured works from the collection of St. Petersburg photographer Oleg Polishchuk, acquired by the museum in 2005.

In 2007, Falin’s works were included in the exhibition Leningrad Photo Underground, organized by the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

Selected Exhibitions:

1983–1985 — To the Music of Vivaldi. Leningrad Theatre Institute; Lisiy Nos, Olgino, Kolpino;

1986 — The Magic of Transformation. Advanced Training Courses for Cultural Administrators, Leningrad;
1987 — Photo Club Zerkalo;
1996 — Permanent exhibition. PTS, Department of External Development, St. Petersburg;
1996 — Exhibition (with V. Egorovsky). Cultural Centre, Free Gallery, Hamburg;
2000 — Positive / Negative: Photographic Dimensions. PHOTOimage Gallery, St. Petersburg;
2002 — Photography of the 1970s. Gallery 103 / Pushkinskaya Observatory, St. Petersburg.
Photo club photography