St. Petersburg 300th Birthday Tribute: People and Palaces in Photographs around 1900

On 10 June, 2003, in the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House (London) opened an exhibition of Russian historical photographs, showing about 200 pictures from the Hermitage collection which offer a unique opportunity to see the life of St. Petersburg in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, when it was still the capital of the Russian Empire.

Less known than the collections of Old Masters, this collection includes about 40,000 photographs dating between 1840 and 1920, most of which have never been published before. The collection’s core is family pictures preserved in the Hermitage libraries and private houses of the Imperial dynasty. Most of the pictures displayed belonged to Emperors Alexander III and Nicholas II, and members of their families. After the 1917 Revolution, the Hermitage collection was added photographs from the palaces and archives of the families of Bobrinsky, Shuvalov, Stroganoff and Levashov.

Alongside the city’s views, the exhibition shows the culture and business life of St. Petersburg, and the changes caused by the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The show includes exterior and interior views of the palaces of St. Petersburg where the collections of paintings and applied art acquired by the Hermitage in the wake of the 1917 Revolution were preserved. Another group of photographs focuses on the masquerade ball held in the Winter Palace in February 1903. In contrast to this opulence is a selection of images of ordinary people and everyday life with its markets, street fairs and tramways, including some remarkable specimens of early reporter photography.

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