Nikolay Makarovich Petrov

Nikolay Patrov in Korsakovo in 1892, died in 1959. The son of a Korsakov peasant, Petrov became an apprentice in the studio of Scherrer and Nabholz in Moscow on the eve of the Revolution. He was a soldier during the First World War, after which he enlisted in the Red Army and became an instructor in the All-Russia Executive Committee. He was a pupil of the "old school" of reporter-photographers like A. Savelyev and K. Kuznekov. In 1924, he became photo-correspondent for the newspaper "Izvestia", which he supplied with photographs for the next forty years. This is why his work concentrates on political events such as demonstrations, parades and daily news reports. He also liked to record the different aspects of Moscow as a city. He was one of the first to utilize the upper part of the frame, for example in his photograph of the Sukharev market taken around 1920, just before the construction of pavilions to a design by Lemnikov in 1924. During the Second World War, Petrov was photographer at the front, for "Izvestia". After the war, he turned to color photography. Source: Grigory Shudakov. "Pioneers of Soviet Photography". New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983, p. 250