424
Expositions Universelle, Paris due in part to his style
and technique.
From 1891 to 1892, Dmitriev created one of the best
of his works. He was ordered by the Food Commission
for People’s Health to travel to Nizhny Novgorod region,
which suffered from a severe drought that caused an
epidemic of typhoid fever and cholera. At the hazard of
putting his own health at risk, he recorded the terrifying
woes and illnesses of the peasants. These photographs
still make the same impression upon us today that
they did back then. Among them, the “Peasant woman
Sinitsina and her fi ve-day old child—typhoid carriers,”
“The peasants receive the charity bread” and others. His
photographs not only recorded the events but evoked
sympathy as well. Dmitriev was the fi rst photographer
in Russia to make an attempt to infl uence public opinion
by means of photography, and as a result, eventually
made the government more active in helping the ag-
grieved. This was the fi rst Russian photo-report and
ancestor to the activities of R.E. Stryker and American
photographers of 1930s.
By the 1890s Dmitriev opened a photo-type studio in
which his album “The Year of Poor Crops of 1891–1892
in the Nijnij Novgorod Province” was published in
- The photo-type technology made it possible to
increase the number of the album’s copies printed. This
circumstance alone allowed more people access to the
published prints and henceforth, enlarged the infl uence
on public opinion. This album inspired other Russian
photographers to depict folk life. The works of such
theme started to appear on the pages of magazines and
newspapers, ultimately creating the basic principles of
the Russian photo-report.
The photos combined the picturesque of highly
artistic photography and the documentary veracity of
reality. The leading Russian critics and public fi gures
thought very highly of his works. In their opinion, the
works would undoubtedly be earmarked as socially
signifi cant and be considered a new step in the develop-
ment of photography. In 1892 Dmitriev’s works were
awarded a golden medal at the fi rst international exhibi-
tion of photography in Paris, clearly placing his as the
best among the pictorial professional photographers.
He also won a golden medal at an exhibition in Mos-
cow, and in 1895, Dmitriev won the highest award, the
diploma at the Holland World photography exhibition.
The French photographer F. Nadar highly appreciated
Dmitriev’s work.
In 1894 Dmitriev took a trip, sponsored by the Com-
munication Lines offi ce, from Rybinsk to Astrakhan
via the Volga River on a steamboat named “Olga.” In
the course of the trip, he was to photograph the views,
architectural monuments, and to make ethnographic
photosgraphs of the inhabitants of the region. He worked
for ten years, making photographs of the region from the
mouth of the Volga all the way to Astrakhan, gathering
over 4000 negatives in the process. He used these photos
as the basis for photo-cards, of which there were over
700 scenes for them. Dmitriev’s captured unique photos
of the lifestyle of Old Believers, a group of people who
lived isolated from the outside world. He photographed
their monasteries and their homemade crafts. While he
had an interest in the unusual, Dmitriev also had a great
interest in taking photographs of the famous Nizhny
Novgorod fairs. This compilation of diverse environ-
ments created a most interesting panoramic series of
sketches refl ecting the life of the Volga region and its
people.
Dmitriev’s aspiration to capture realism in photog-
raphy in the absence of studio arrangements should be
considered as an important step forward in the develop-
ment of Russian photography.
In 1896 Dmitriev’s works were displayed in the
photography department of the All-Russia Exhibition
in Nizhny Novgorod. His contemporaries said of him:
“The most outstanding exhibit here is undoubtedly the
work by a local photographer Dmitriev. He exposed in
his beautiful showcase, one of the best showcases in
the exhibition, more than 100 views of Volga,” “This
picturesque description of the great Russian river is
defi nitely the central work of the exhibition.”
In this year Dmitriev made friends with the great
Russian Writer M.Gorky. This friendship led to the
creation of a varied series of portraits of the writer.
Dmitriev also created a gallery of outstanding fi gures
in Russian culture. On Gorky’s request, Dmitriev made
photo-sketches of a couple of inhabitants of Nizhny
Novgorod, which the writer used as prototypes to create
some of the characters of his plays, and the protagonists
of his short stories.
In the 1900s, Dmitiriev was still making photographs
of the city life, exposing the social contrasts, demon-
strating and recording the life of workers, paupers,
and the living conditions in night shelters. Dmitriev’s
disapproving opinion of pictorialism could be found in
his exact and realistic photography.
After the revolution of 1917, Dmitriev found himself
under the pressure of Soviet authorities since he was a
proprietor of a studio that used wage labor. Dmitriev
developed problems with his health, a large majority
of his negatives were taken from him, and had been
directed to make a few photo-reports of the new life
in Nizhny Novgorod. In 1928 Dmitriev took part in a
large exhibition “10 years of Soviet photography” but
even so, little by little his works slipped into oblivion.
Dmitriev’s death in 1948 in Nizhny Novgorod, then
called Gorky, went unnoticed.
Alexey Loginov