Public Photo Chronicles

Russia’s History in Photographs, a new online archive launched this month, contains thousands of images and dozens of digitized collections.

Currently the project boasts 70,000 photos dating from the mid-19th century to 1999, all of them available online on the digital archive’s website. The photos come from over 40 different collections, including from museums and archives, e.g. the Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photographic and Phonographic Documents in Saint-Petersburg and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as from private collections, e.g. the collection of artist and photographer Alexander Rodchenko inherited by his family.

Another distinctive feature and one of the key ideas behind the digital archive "Russia’s History in Photographs" is that users are encouraged to get engaged in the project. Anyone can try their hand at curating and create digital exhibitions based on the archival materials or upload their own collections and thus add to the public archive.