State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSPHOTO

About museum

State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSPHOTO — the only federal photography museum in Russia — was founded in 2002 by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. The main task of the Museum and Exhibition Center is to assemble a collection, preserve and study unique visual materials related to the history of world and Russian photography, technologies, artistic styles and photographic techniques, from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the 21st century.
ROSPHOTO's extensive collection comprises over 60,000 storage units.
The Museum and Exhibition Center holds about 20 exhibitions annually both in its exhibition halls in the historic center of Saint Petersburg and in other cities and regions of Russia, and collaborates with major international institutions.
The museum regularly hosts meetings with authors, carries out unique restoration work, and holds conferences and practical workshops.

The museum has developed Eidoteca — a unique system for storing digital museum objects and other multimedia content, accessible to a wide audience.

Particular attention is paid to programs for children and teenagers, for whom tours, exciting quests and master classes are held, available via the Pushkin Card. The Museum and Exhibition Center also offers special programs for people with disabilities.

ROSPHOTO promotes Russian photographic art and preserves Russia's photographic heritage, discovers new names and introduces the public to key phenomena in world photography.

Since 2024, the museum has a permanent multimedia exhibition "Inside an Old Camera", which acquaints visitors with the history of photography through the development of equipment and technologies. The latest creative approaches allow visitors not only to come into contact with the unique 19th-century invention — photography — but also to see the process of image creation. The central element of the exhibition is an installation that allows visitors to "enter" an old camera and, using modern digital technologies, create their own portrait in techniques that imitate daguerreotype, tintype and albumen prints.