Historical Exhibition of the Photography Museum

About exhibition

One of the exhibition halls is devoted to the history of the city of Nizhny Novgorod. It presents photographs by M. P. Nastyukova, A. O. Karelin, M. P. Dmitriev and D. N. Smirnov. Visitors can get acquainted with the appearance of the city at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries: its streets, squares, cathedrals and monasteries, many of which have not survived to the present day, and with the history of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair and the 16th All‑Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1896. In the center of the hall there is a reconstruction of Maksim Dmitriev's spring wagon, in which he transported his photographic equipment. The "Reportage" hall features photographs from Dmitriev's famous album "The Famine Year 1891–1892 in the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate", as well as his images of Old Believer hermitages and monasteries. The "Portrait" hall introduces unique photographs by A. O. Karelin from the "Art Album of Photographs from Life". The hall recreates a corner of an interior where the author took his famous photograph "Girls with Albums." In the "History of Photographic Equipment" hall there is a camera obscura in the form of a large tent and a photoplastikon. Entering the camera obscura, you can see an image as Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci saw it, and the photoplastikon presents 3D photographs of old Nizhny. In the display cases are wooden box‑type cameras from the 1870s designed for glass negatives; cameras by famous firms Agfa, Zeiss‑Ikon, Goerz, Voigtländer, Kodak and Leica; and Soviet cameras of the 20th century, which have now also become history.