Anatoly Trapani is one of the brightest and most enigmatic figures in the history of Russian photography. Despite the fact that little is known about him and only a few of his works have survived to this day, he left a significant trace in the development of pictorialism in Russia in the first decades of the 20th century. The almost detective history of studying bits of information about his life and work shows that he played a significant role in the rapid development of ‘artistic’ photography: in the propaganda of a radical, European approach to artistic photography, in ideological disputes on the pages of periodicals, as well as in the formation of a new type of exhibitions – ‘salons of artistic photography’. In this lecture, we will examine the works of Trapani and the artists-photographers of his circle – members of the Young Art association (Nikolai Petrov, Sergei Savrasov, Nikolai Murzin, Alexander Ivanov-Terentiev), as well as friends and associates (Yuri Eremin, Alexander Grinberg, Nikolai Svishchev-Paola, Boris Pashkevich, Myron Sherling and others). ), we will consider the main characteristic features of pictorialism as the first purely photographic movement, the stages and peculiarities of its development on Russian soil, the inclusion of this movement in the global context and in the general field of Silver Age culture. We will also try to trace the influence of the Pictorialism paradigm on the further development of artistic photography in Russia.

About the speaker:
Igor Volkov – graduated from the Department of History and Theory of Art at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2012. He worked in the Department of Art of Photography at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and then at the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow. Since 2019 he has been a member of the New Currents Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery. One of the curators of the exhibitions “Russian Fairy Tale. From Vasnetsov to Now‘ and ’Thing. Space. Man”, held at the New Tretyakov Gallery. He has given lectures at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Lumiere Brothers Centre for Photography, Litfond Auction House, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow and the State Tretyakov Gallery, as well as on the Synchronisation platform. Areas of research interests: contemporary art and tradition; mutual influence of photography and other art forms; body and corporeality in plastic arts; leitmotifs and symbols of modernity in 20th century art.