Along the Banks of the Volga River
Masterpieces of the Russian photography from the second half of the 19th century
in the collection of the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg.
The photographer Andrey Karelin (1837 - 1906) also graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. He lived and worked in Nizhny Novgorod, and was an adherent of what is presently known as fine art photography. In 1870, Karelin became famous in Europe for creating his so-called "room-groups" - complex compositions of many figures placed in beautiful interiors and shot by the author's unique technical method. In the 1880s, Karelin focused on the genre of landscape. He made photographic depictions of Nizhny Novgorod that were sold in great numbers to the tourists coming to the famous Fair. The Volga nature dictated its own will to Karelin's panoramic works which, despite their small size, managed to convey the vast expanse of the town stretching over the river. The bird's-eye view panoramas perfectly captured the immense extend of the Volga, the steepness of its banks, the domes of the churches and the ships afloat. In 1885, Karelin began to work as a chronicler and made a photographic collection for the Album about Stay of the Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich and the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna in Nizhny Novgorod and at Nizhny Novgorod Fair. The artist did not only capture the arrival of the Royal guests and simultaneously snapshot the moving procession and crowds of people; in printing positives, he also used the methods that made him famous, the methods that allowed him to achieve remarkable softness of contours. These photographs demonstrated Karelin's ability to work in a new technical genre, which still lacked firm professional basis. There is a photograph depicting the steamer "Magdalena" that is quite unusual for Karelin who was strongly attracted to the aesthetic laws of classical fine arts. In this picture, the artist did not only manage to capture the technical parameters of the vessel, but also to convey the beauty of its construction, the peculiarity of its "hovering" over the water mirror-like surface.
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