425
Biography
Maxim Petrovich Dmitriev was born on the 9th of Au-
gust, 1858 in the village of Povalishino, in the Tambov
region. 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. In 1877 he moved to Nizhny Novgorod and
took the position of retoucher in Leibovsky’s studio.
From 1880 he worked in the studio of a famous photog-
rapher from Nizhny Novgorod A. Karelin. Then in 1886,
Dmitriev managed to establish a photo-studio, in which
he worked for more than forty years. He demonstrated
his works at home and abroad, winning prizes. From
1891 to 1992, Dmitriev created a series devoted to the
woes of inhabitants of the Volga region, who suffered
an epidemic of typhoid and cholera caused by severe
drought. For ten years following 1894, Dmitriev made
photos of Volga and its neighborhood from the mouth of
the Volga to Astrakhan. He took photographs of archi-
tectural monuments and made ethnographic photos of
inhabitants of the region. In 1894 he became a member
of the Russian Photographic Society in Moscow. After
the revolution of 1917 Dmitriev found himself under the
pressure of Soviet authorities since he was a proprietor
of a studio, and the majorority of his negatives were
taken from him. Dmitriev died in Nizhny Novgorod
in 1948.
See also: Karelin, Andrey Osipovich; Emerson, Peter
Henry; Expositions Universelle, Paris (1854, 1855,
1867 etc.); and Nadar, (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon).
Further Reading
S. Morozov, Artistic Photography, M., Planet, 1986, 416 pp.
M. Dmitriev, Photographs, Edited by A. Baskakova, M., Planeta,
240 pp.
——, Russische photographie 1840–1940, Berlin, Ars Nicolai,
1993
——, Russian Photography, The Middle of the 19th—the Begin-
ning of the 20th Century, Chief editor N.Rakchmanov, M.,
Planeta, 1996, 344 pp.
Horoshilov, A. Loginov, The Masterpieces of the Photography
from Private Collections, Russian Photography 1849–1918,
M., Punctum 2003, 176 pp.
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Using the camera as a documentary tool was its favored
purpose at the inception. Well before it was embraced
as a fi ne art medium, it was understood to be a unique
graphic witness to moment and place. Both in its level
of perceived veracity and its ability to be reproduced and
disseminated, was the ideal method for communicating
the image of the Industrial Revolution.
In the early years, spontaneity and productivity were
hampered by technological limitations, as well as the
cost of transporting the equipment. The fi rst decades of
the medium, however witnessed numerous indomitable
adventurers who overcame all logistical obstacles [and
their attendant expense] and traveled to the remotest and
most challenging terrain.
Images of remote places; the landscapes of the
American West; scientifi c records of archaeological
digs and anthropological studies, architectural records;
police photography; images of war, as well as the ur-
ban and rural poor were among the documents that we
associate with the century. Often, the making of these
pictures served dual purposes: offi cial and commercial,
for example, those made in the Western United States,
which were commissioned by an offi cial survey team
and also resulted in literally hundreds of thousands of
stereo cards and other published manifestations.
Capturing exotic locales by camera was a continua-
tion of an established tradition of publishing prints and
illustrated books on the lives, locations and customs of
the “exotic,” and the “primitive” cultures. As soon as
it was technologically feasible, photographers carried
on with that business, for which there was a proven
audience, with satisfyingly popular results, given that
the look of the photographs was such a pronounced
departure from the romanticized lithographic interpre-
tations.
Frances Frith, who traveled from London to Egypt in
the late 1850s, worked very much in that 18th century
style, creating luxurious albums of his views. Désiré
Charnay, a French archeologist, photographed ruins
in Mexico and the Yucatan in 1857 and Madagascar
in 1863 in a similar fashion. Samuel Bourne climbed
the Himalayas in 1863, with sherpas dragging his
cumbersome photographic lab up the mountains, and
subsequently authored a narrative account of his travels.
He compared the terrain’s beauty unfavorably with the
Swiss Alps, which had been photographed by Louis
Auguste and Auguste Rosalie Bisson, French brothers,
who accompanied Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie
there in 1860.
Francis Bedford accompanied the Prince of Wales on
his tour of the Middle East in 1862, as a documentar-
ian for Queen Victoria, who would naturally require a
reproducible album of commemoration for so important
an offi cial journey.
John Thompson, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic
Society, devoted his early career to the Far East, but
less its structural marvels than its local customs and
people. His Illustrations of China and Its People in
1873–74, featured 200 Albertype photographic images,
concentrating more on people and picturesque locales
than distinctive monuments.
Ethnographic views of foreign cultures were made
by photographers such as Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne
and John Burke, all of whom traveled to the South Asian