The exhibition project is dedicated to the legacy of Valentin Petrovich Serov (1947–1988), a photographer whose life and work were inextricably linked to cinema and Moscow’s artistic scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

The exhibition features original photographic prints made using the gelatin silver printing process from the late 1960s through 1988. The core of the collection was created during Serov’s years at Mosfilm Studios (1977–1988), where he photographed screen tests, promotional stills for the distribution of films in the Soviet Union and abroad, portraits of cast and crew members, as well as the filmmaking process itself. His photographs document the production of such films as Tehran 43, Vassa, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Mary Poppins, Goodbye, Formula of Love.

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Serov documented the life of Moscow’s artistic scene, whose participants included Oscar Rabin, Ernst Neizvestny, Vasily Sitnikov, Anatoly Zverev, Alexander Melamid, Vitaly Komar, Yevgeny Rukhin, Alexander Arefiev, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Vladimir Ufliand, and many others.

Together with another photographer-chronicleer, Igor Palmin, Serov documented the opening of an exhibition at the House of Culture at VDNKh in September of 1975. The photographic chronicle of the activities of the “Twenty Moscow Artists” group at the exhibition hall on 28 Malaya Gruzinskaya Street represents a distinct chapter in his work.

In the apartment of one of the group’s leaders, Koryun Nagapetyan, Serov’s photographs were displayed alongside paintings by the artists. Through his photographs of apartment exhibitions and artists’ studios, as well as his portraits of artists, poets, and film directors, Valentin Serov created an extensive gallery of images that would later become part of the history of contemporary art.

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Serov’s photographic language evolved from reportage toward fine-art photography and metaphor. In the 1970s, he became fascinated with photographing mime, experimenting with blurred imagery, combination printing, toning, and solarization. His exploration of the nude genre, in which the plasticity of the human body and light were combined with images of nature, lent his work a poetic depth. Serov sought to achieve a synthesis of documentary representation and a detached, emotionally nuanced vision.

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The final years of the photographer’s life were marked by active participation in exhibitions and the founding of Sovremennik, a club of Moscow photographers. His plans were cut short in 1988, when he died in a tragic accident on a railway.

The work of Valentin Serov embodies the aesthetic explorations of Russian photography in the 1970s and 1980s. His prints preserve the atmosphere of an entire era while conveying the photographer’s distinctive personal voice, for whom the artistic quality of the image was the ultimate measure of professionalism and dedication.

ROSPHOTO would like to express gratitude to Gleb Valentinovich Serov and Ekaterina Nikolaevna Serova for donating Valentin Serov’s collection to the museum’s holdings and for their assistance in preparing the exhibition.

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