Maxim Petrovich Dmitriyev was born in the Tambov Governorate in 1858. He graduated from a parochial school. Then he became an apprentice to the Moscow photographer Mikhail Petrovich Nastyukov. He also took Sunday drawing courses, learning the basics of composition, perspective, and the balance of light and shadow.
In 1877, he moved to Nizhny Novgorod and got a job as a retouch artist in the studio of David Leybovsky. In 1879, Dmitriyev became Andrey Osipovich Karelin’s assistant.
In 1886, Maxim Dmitriyev began working as a photographer in the same Nizhny Novgorod pavilion on Osypnaya Street, where his mentor Andrey Karelin had worked from 1873 to 1881. However, Dmitriyev’s scope of interest went beyond salon photography and included landscapes, urban motifs, loaders, peasants, hermits, coachmen, and vagabonds. His work was primarily focused on everyday life.
In 1892, Dmitriyev received a gold medal at the exhibition in Paris in the “Professional Art Photography” category for the shot titled “Prisoners at the Construction Works”. Maxim Dmitriyev was convinced that the subject of a photograph can be something other than just “noble and beautiful”. Between 1891 and 1892, the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate went through crop failure, drought and epidemics of typhus and cholera. Dmitriyev appealed to the governor’s office and received permission “to enter cholera hospitals to take photographic images.” Armed with a wooden camera and 18 by 24 cm glass plates, the photographer set out on a trip through the south of the governorate.
Maxim Dmitriyev loved to shoot city views. He took a great number of panoramic pictures with his wooden camera, climbing on the roofs of houses and bell towers. Many photos of the crowded, multicultural Nizhny Novgorod Fair and the 16th All-Russia Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896 have been preserved. Maxim Dmitriyev also recorded all the visits of Emperor Nicholas II to Nizhny Novgorod.
By 1900, Maxim Dmitriyev had already earned 15 gold medals. He was actively engaged in public life. He was the councilor of the city Duma and the chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Circle of Photographers.
The turbulent year of 1917 changed the lives of many people dramatically. Dmitriyev was not spared the difficulties of the new time. By 1929, all private photo salons in Nizhny Novgorod had been nationalized.
Maxim Dmitriyev spent his last years in the house of his son-in-law Alexander Pirozhnikov. Illnesses and a progressive loss of sight did not harden the photographer’s heart. Even in his last days, he remained a benevolent person, keen on photography.
