Along with the pictures of Nizhny Novgorod captured by the photographer Sergei Pokalyakin, his friend, artist Vladimir Kundin, donated an old homemade wooden camera that belonged to priest Sergiy Skvortsov (1890-1937) to the funds of the Russian Museum of Photography. He served in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in the village of Sokolskoye, Nizhny Novgorod province. Father Sergius not only served in his parish regularly, but also taught grammar and arithmetic to peasant children, and also explained the basics of photography to them, filmed his students and their relatives. With their wife Feoktista Lebedeva, they raised five children: Nina, Vladimir, Evgeny, Sergius and Tatiana. The fellow villagers respectfully treated Fr. Sergius.

On December 30, 1937, Sergiy Skvortsov was convicted as an ‘enemy of the people’ under Art. 58 of the Criminal Code, thus, by the decision of the ‘troika’ he was shot a week after his arrest (Jan 8, 1938). In memory of him, fellow villagers took some things from his house so that they would not be confiscated and lost. Thus, a cracked old wooden camera has been preserved.