January 12, 2025

Piter's Retro Photo Salon


Piter's Retro Photo Salon
Examples of portraits using the ambrotype method. Photo Studio No. 1.

In St. Petersburg there is a photo studio that takes analog photos using a method known as ambrotype, which has its origins in the 1850s. Images are captured on a glass plate with a wooden photo camera. A crisp portrait requires the subject(s) to stand motionless for 20 seconds. A century and a half ago, such a portrait might cost the client a month's salary. Today prices start at about R1,500 ($15) for a small portrait.

The photo studio is located in the Karl Bulla Museum at Nevsky 154, in the attic of a building that has been a center for St. Petersburg photography since before the Bolshevik Revolution. Kristina, the studio's founder, used to design ventilation and heating systems, but has been interested in photography since she was a child. After seeing some old portraits, she got training in how to make ambrotypes. There are, she said, about 100 people in Russia making prints this way.

Image of a photo studio.
Kristina's studio in the Karl Brulla Museum. Photo credit: Bumaga

After completing her training, Kristina had to find a camera – no easy task. Prices for vintage format cameras can range from R15,000-1,000,000 million, and often the old cameras have to be repaired.

"I was lucky," Kristina said, "I found an inexpensive old camera that was German or English. Then I bought a lens made 1939. With this, in early December 2023, I took photos of my parents for their 40-year marriage anniversary. They were my guinea pigs."

At the end of 2023, Kristina's brother, Eduard, who had retired from the police, learned that his sister was interested in ambrotype photography, and then became interested in vintage equipment. The siblings decided to join forces and open a photo studio for tourists in Vyborg, where Eduard lives.

"Usually people do this for themselves or occasionally shoot in private studios," Kristina said. "No one works with tourists en masse. And so we decided to try to occupy this niche. Initially, we opened up in Vyborg, and not St. Petersburg, because it would not be so scary. In a small tourist town, it is easier to deal with the bumps. In the future, in a big city, you can always correct your mistakes."

A brother and sister opened their photo studio in the old part of the city — on Krasnoflotskaya, 4A, next to Krepostnaya Street and Vyborg Castle. Their first clients had to be lured in off the street.

"It was difficult," she said, "because we had no one to spy on. After all, no one else works with tourists in Russia. I didn’t know why not. But now I understand. For a photo shoot, people usually put on makeup and get ready, but tourists on excursions come in wearing what is most comfortable for walking around the city. If I knew how hard it is to raise people’s spirits, I would have thought twice."

Woman in portrait looking at camera.
Kristina at the Karl Bulla Museum. Photo credit: Bumaga.

Yet she also noted that the advantage of having a photo studio in Vyborg is that people on vacation are captured with their whole family or their whole traveling party. "For the family, this is a great event in their lives! The children will grow up, and they will remember how they were photographed with their parents. This will be a part of their history."

Kristina jokingly calls her St. Petersburg photo studio "anti-business." In the year since it opened, it has not managed to break even: they have tapped into their savings to keep the business going. But the experienced ambrotypist feels that it's not about doing a job, but enjoying her hobby.

"Probably the coolest thing is that my idea, my prank, has been a success. Ambrotyping is a rather rare and unique thing. When people visit, they say they have never seen anything like this. And I enjoy it!"

Originally published by Paper Paper.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955