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Valery Katsuba
THE MODEL. St. PETERSBURG
100 Years On
2013 — 2014
Semen Mikhailovsky, curator, rector of The St. Petersburg Academy of Arts
“Many different photographers have photographed at the Academy of Arts: amateurs and professionals. During Soviet times, there was a laboratory here where many great people worked, not only photographing artists’ oeuvres or academic ceremonies, but also helping students develop film and printing pictures. I remember there was this old equipment and under the vaulted ceilings moths fluttered in mysterious twilight. It was Baron Clodt who first worked on opening the photo laboratory at the Academy.
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It should be noted that the first photographic images – specifically three images by Daguerre – were exhibited within the academic walls of the Academy in the fall of 1839. One of the first people to receive the honorary title of Photographer of the Imperial Academy of Arts ‘for the invention of a special photographic method’ was Andrey Karelin. And we should not forget that Kramskoi and Kuindzhi earned a little additional money on the side by retouching photographs.
Thanks to photographs created 100 years ago by Karl Bulla, we know how meetings of the Council presided over by the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna took place and how Feodor Chaliapin was celebrated in our dining room. In the not too distant past, Sarah Moon, Deborah Turbeville, Fritz von der Schulenburg and Philip-Lorca diCorcia did photo shoots for fashion magazines at the Academy. They were enchanted by the Academy, and their enthusiasm inspired us.
Valery Katsuba, who photographed at the Academy for Harper’s Bazaar UK, is my old friend. When I suggested to him photographing in the studios of the Academy professors and students, instead of models, he magnanimously agreed. Katsuba appreciates and loves the Academy. His works are steeped in a sense of respect for the Academy as a custodian of classical traditions of art. He poeticizes the Academy in his works, creates a perfect image of the art school, perhaps beyond reality, but seductively beautiful.”
Valery Katsuba, artist
“In the late 1990’s, when I was working at the Archive of Cinema and Photographic Documents, I happened to see a 1914 photograph by Carl Bulla taken at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, “Life-drawing Class in Professor Makovsky’s Studio”. The photo captured my imagination and I asked to make a copy. Meanwhile, and even before that, my imagination was being captured by the Academy itself. I remember returning from the Mariinsky Theater after its performances and every time wanting to select a route that would take me to Zamyatina Lane, which would lead me to the Neva Embankment, which opened the view onto the Academy… It majestically rose before my eyes and excited me by thoughts of what may be behind its walls.
Thus, my two anchors in St. Petersburg, the Academy of Arts and Mariinsky Theater, became connected in my mind. And, so on every occasion I went to them asking myself, if these “objects of my desire” weren’t in this city, would I still be here?
From time to time, I shot at the Academy and at the Mariinsky. Once, I managed to combine the objects of my desire when I photographed for Harper’s Bazaar UK the prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, Oksana Skorik, in the interior of the Academy museum. But neither photographing athletes, nor ballerinas gave me complete satisfaction, and the Bulla photo would not leave my imagination. I felt that I was missing an essential element what the Academy had. The photographs were lacking the energy of creation, the silence of labor in which artworks are born and take on their final forms.
Fifteen years has passed since I printed out that academic photo. And then by accident, I happen to bump into Semyon Mikhailovsky, with whom I have been friends since the early 1990’s.
That meeting happened in the summer of last year when I went to the Academy to confirm the location for the photo shoot with Mariinsky theater solists, and before going inside, I stopped to have a smoke. Just as I lit up, there appeared at the entrance Semyon Mikhailovsky, by now the rector of the Academy (which, at the time, I did not know).
That meeting became the beginning of the project “100 Years Later”. Exactly 100 years after Carl Bulla’s photo, I became very fortunate to have the opportunity to shoot in the studios of the Academy of Arts nude sitters, students and professors. I have always been interested by the relative constancy of landscapes – whether natural or architectural – and the human fates, faces and historical eras that go through them. I am interested in how, through time, our plasticity, our views, our body shape changes – or whether these things change at all. And the building of the Academy, which has remained constant through centuries, is a perfect setting for exploring these questions, especially given that besides the preservation of the walls, therein lives the memory of generations of artists and the captivating magic of creativity.
Also it is significant that the opening of the exhibition is taking place on June 10, on Birthday of Yuriy Vinogradov, the person who inspired me to create the very first photo story and then strongly supported.»
With thanks to
St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts
Sputnik Gallery, New York
Scientific-research Museum of The Russian Academy of Arts
ProLab, Moscow (Tecknical partner)
Harper’s Bazaar Art (Info partner)
Sergey Diyachkov and Daniil Bayushev
List of photographs
1. Valery Katsuba. Nude Male Models. Faculty of Painting. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
2. Valery Katsuba. Posing of Nude Male Models. Faculty of Painting. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
3. Valery Katsuba. Nude Female Models. Faculty of Painting. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
4. Valery Katsuba. Posing of Nude Female Models. Faculty of Painting. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
5. Valery Katsuba. Gymnast at the Art Academy (2). St. Petersburg, 2008
6. Valery Katsuba. Gymnast at the Art Academy (1). St. Petersburg, 2008
7. Valery Katsuba. Posing of Nude Female Models. Faculty of Sculpture. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
8. Valery Katsuba. Posing of Nude Female Model (Detail).
Faculty of Sculpture. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
9. Valery Katsuba. Gymnast and Apollo Sculpture at the Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2008
10. Valery Katsuba. Athlete on the background of “Fight of the Gods with the Giants” at the Art Academy. St. Petersburg, 2008
11. Valery Katsuba. Physical culture enthusiast at the Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2006
12. Valery Katsuba. Drawing Class. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
13. Valery Katsuba. Dance in Titian Hall. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
14. Valery Katsuba. Ballerina and Dioscurus. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
15. Valery Katsuba. Ballerina on the Grand Staircase. Morning. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
16. Valery Katsuba. Model with a Horse (C). Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
17. Valery Katsuba. Model with a Horse (B). Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
18. Valery Katsuba. Painting Session with a Horse. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
19. Valery Katsuba. Model with a Horse (D). Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
20. Valery Katsuba. Model with a Horse (A). Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
21. Valery Katsuba. Class in the Studio of Professor Vladimir Pesikov. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
22. Valery Katsuba. Etching Studio. Instructor, Maria Shestopalova.
Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg, 2013
23. Valery Katsuba. Etching Studio. Vice-Rector Andrey Sklyarenko with Students. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
24. Valery Katsuba. Anatomical Study. Assistant Professor Oleg Shekhurdin Accepting Exams. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
25. Valery Katsuba. Anatomical Study. Professor Genady Manasherov Аccepting Еxams. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
26. Valery Katsuba. Anatomical Study. Methodist Mikhail Malyakov with Student. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
27. Valery Katsuba. Grand Staircase. Morning. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
28. Valery Katsuba. Exposition before Final Exams. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2014
29. Valery Katsuba. Grand Staircase. Evening. Academy of Arts. St. Petersburg, 2013
30. Archives. M. Braytaks. Sculpture Studio of Professor V. Beklemisheva, 1913. Department of Negatives and Photoreproductions, Scientific Archives of Art (St. Petersburg)
31. Archives. Unknown. Battle-painting Studio. Imperial Academy of Arts, circa 1914. Department of Negatives and Photoreproductions, Scientific Archives of Art (St. Petersburg).
32. Archives. Karl Bulla. Classroom Instruction of Live Nature, Imperial Academy of Arts, 1914. (StGAKFFD)
33. Archives. Karl Bulla. Classroom Instruction of Live Nature by Painting Professor Makovskovo, Imperial Academy of Arts, 1914. (StGAKFFD)
© 2025 V. Katsuba