Ivan Bianki: pervyi svetopisets Peterburga (Ivan Bianki, the First Photographer of St. Petersburg)
St. Petersburg: Muzei istorii Sankt-Peterburga, 2005. Sewn pb. The Swiss photographer who settled in St. Petersburg left a heritage of about four hundred veduta of the imperial capital. The difficulty of realizing his achievement has been that his works are scattered in various Russian and Swiss collections. The curators of the exhibition at the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg gathered photos from fourteen museums and five private collections in Russia and Switzerland. They catalogue 372 photographs definitely attributable to Bianki and another 32 that are probably part of his oeuvre. The photos themselves capture the elegance of the city in clean uncluttered shots of squares, river vistas, and great works of architecture; shots of interiors transport us into the style of aristocratic salons of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. 160 pp., 9 x 10 1/2 ins., 47 plates, 340 b-&-w illus., sewn pb., Rus. Item #1120
ISBN: 5902671175
Price: $38.00