The Art Album

In 1866 A.O. Karelin moved from Kostroma to Nizhny Novgorod where in 1869 he opened a workshop ‘Photography and painting of the artist Karelin’: everyone could order paintings and photographic portraits. In Nizhny, ‘Russian pocket’, he was attracted by the opportunity to receive orders at the Nizhny Novgorod fair. In 1873 Andrew transferred his workshop to the apartment house of Nikolaeva on Osypnaya Street (now Piskunov Street, Russian Museum of Photography). A photo pavilion was built there according to his special project: it was longer than usual, and in addition to the glass ceiling and walls, more windows were made in one of the walls. Karelin’s photographs are filled with pure magical light, which gives his models special softness, plasticity and volume. An excellent Master of Composition, Andrew created wonderful artistic photographs. His graceful room groups and genre scenes delighted connoisseurs of beauty.

Karelin was primarily interested in producing portraits. He made a huge number of unique photographs depicting Russian intelligentsia of that time: Korolenko, Gorky, Shishkin, Vereshchagin, Makovsky, Shchukin, Mendeleev, Jacobi.
In the 1870s — 80s Karelin published several issues of the “Art Album of Photos”. It included all possible genres — plot scenes, landscapes, ethnographic and architectural photography, as well as photographs of households, children, relatives, friends, and numerous self-portraits.
The prints were made on albumin paper and toned in sepia. The photographs depicted the interiors of the house on Osypnaya lost in the 20th century and the atmosphere the photographer’s family lived in.

When creating the album, Karelin used the so-called soft printing method, which consisted in the fact that a positive image was printed simultaneously from two negatives of different densities. As a result, the rigidity of lines excessive for interior photography disappeared, the photographic image became more of the graphic one. A particular difficulty was the use of the ‘soft’ method for printing on a large format, which Karelinbrilliantly coped with.

In 1876, at the World Photographic Exhibition in Edinburgh, Andrew Karelin literally ‘overshadowed the works of all famous foreigners and, by the unanimous decision of the jury, received the highest award — a golden medal “For the discovery of a new way and techniques in photographing, and for special works and useful activities”.
In 1876, Karelin was awarded the title of photographer of the Imperial Academy of Arts “For an invented special method of photography”.
In 1878 he was accepted as a member of the French National Academy of Arts. Karelin’s name became famous all over the world.
In 1880, Andrew became a full member of the 5th department of the Imperial Russian Technical Society for photography and its applications.
In 1885 Karelin was awarded the medal of the Imperial Russian Technical Society ‘For excellent and artistic execution of photographs and for progressive improvement of his business’.

Karelin’s creativity is diverse. His legacy includes not only beautiful “room groups”, but also gorgeous pictures of children, animals, birds, pictures of views and processions. Through the works of Karelin one can trace an entire era in the development of photography: he has preserved photographs of a wide variety of printing methods — from the wet collodion process to dry bromo-gelatin one. He was one of the first who captured solar eclipse, produced postcards with Nizhny Novgorod’s views; striving to demonstrate natural colours, he painted photographs.
Karelin’s interests and hobbies were various as well. He was fond of graphic and icon painting, music, astronomy; he was an active public figure.