Family Album. Felicia’s Archive

The exhibition presents a unique family archive that includes more than one hundred photographs.

Main Building Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor

21.04.2023—20.08.2023

The exhibition features a unique family archive containing more than one hundred photographs. The collection was donated to the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSPHOTO in 2022 and was named after the central figure depicted in the images — Felicia Romanskaya (née Frantz).

Неизвестный автор.
Фелиция Карловна Романская (урожд. Франтц) 1900—1910-е — Неизвестный автор. Фелиция Карловна Романская (урожд. Франтц) 1900—1910-е

The collection, covering the period from the 1860s to the 1940s, includes professional studio portraits made in photographic ateliers as well as amateur photographs — open-air and interior snapshots, along with letters and documents.

Family archives are most often formed spontaneously and are filled with anonymous photographs. The work of attribution, identifying the people depicted, determining the origin, place and time of creation, and even authorship, becomes a true investigation. Photographs, preserving the tiniest details, carry a wealth of hidden information: the sitters’ clothing, insignia, interior surroundings. All these fragments of the past, when pieced together, form a portrait of an entire family lineage.

“Felicia’s Archive” is a laboratory exhibition, where visitors can not only see images from a collection spanning three generations of one family, but also discover the principles behind the attribution of photographic collections and family archives.

Much remains unknown, or exists only as hypotheses and assumptions. ROSPHOTO invites exhibition visitors to take part in this investigation.