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family of house servants. Although abolished in 1861,
this was the time of serfdom in Russia, and Dmitriev’s
family worked for the local landlord. Even so, he was
fostered by a peasant from the Ryasan region and there
he received his primary education at a parochial school.
Because of hard economic times in his village, he de-
cide to go to Moscow to earn a living. Like many boys
of his age and social background, his fi rst job was as
a laborer at a dime-house. From his childhood experi-
ences, he knew quite well what the life of the poor was
like. It was this knowledge that infl uenced his range of
interest regarding the choice of subject matters in his
photographs.
In 1873 he became a bound apprentice to a well-
known Moscow photographer M. Nastjukov. At the
same time, he attended drawing classes at Stroganov
Art College, one of the best of art colleges in Russia.
Not only did Dmitriev learn a technical mastery from
Nastjukov, he also learned how to view his surroundings
with an artistic eye. Thus the large format photos of
Volga with its neighborhood and monuments of archi-
tecture made by Nastjukov in 1860s, inspired Dmitriev
to create his “Volga Collections.”
While developing his photographic skills, Dmitriev
started to work in studios throughout the various towns
of Russia. Then in 1877 he became a retoucher in
Leibovsky’s studio in Nizhny Novgorod. This was the
time when Nizhny Novgorod—the city on Volga, the
country’s thoroughfare—was becoming known as one of
the largest industrial and transportation centers of Rus-
sia. Here Dmitriev dove into the midst of the turbulent
life of the country. He had the opportunity to watch all
classes of society, from paupers and hobos to recently
established tycoons. Since 1880 he worked for several
years under the guidance of an outstanding Russian
photographer, A. Karelin, and learned the mastery of
pictorial photography and methods of creating scenes
in studio photography, but Karelin’s creative ideas con-
tradicted Dmitriev’s artistic principles.
In the 1870s the ideas of the peredvizhniks domi-
nated Russian painting and literature, which infl uenced
problems within the society. The commonplace citizen
became the main and the favorite character of art. The
works illustrated the hardships of the peasants, who
at that time, was the majority of the country’s society.
These subjects became the focus of Dmitriev’s creative
photography. In 1886 Dmitriev established a photo-
studio in which he worked for more than forty years.
Dmitriev made studio photo-portraits and his works of
high artistic value often won prizes at various exhibi-
tions. He also took photos of Nizhny Novgorod and its
neighborhood, often converting them to large-format
prints with dimensions up to 50 × 60 cm and frequently
sold the photos to tourists.
The infl uence of the best landscape painters started
to appear within the trends of the peredvizhniks, like I.
Shishkin’s infl uence upon Dmitriev’s early works. This
representation was recreated in Dmitriev’s “Volga col-
lection,” and as a result became a sensation at Moscow
and St. Petersburg exhibitions of 1889. This series con-
sisted of large-format photographs with beautiful Volga
landscapes, monasteries and fairs, typical characters of
the place as well as scenes of city life. In Russia it was
virtually the fi rst signifi cant photographic series devoted
to ordinary folk life. In his works he was able to show
the new potential of photography. He, like P. Emerson
(1856–1936), stuck to the purity of photo-images and
the reality of scenes. He won a silver medal at the 1889DMITRIEV, MAXIM PETROVICH
Dmitriev, Maxim Petrovich. Peasant
woman Sinitsina and her fi ve-day old
child—typhoid carriers.
From the album The Year of Poor
Crops of 1891-1892 in the Nijnij
Novgorod Province. Private
Collection: Alexei Loginov.