Antoin Sevruguin’s photos of Iran on view at Alexander Solzhenitsyn House

TEHRAN – Photos of social life during the 19th century by the Armenian-Georgian photographer Antoin Sevruguin are on display in an exhibition that opened Wednesday at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad in Moscow.

The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with the Iranian Culture Center in Moscow, the center announced.

Sevruguin was born into a mixed Armenian-Georgian family in the Russian Embassy in Tehran. 

In the late nineteenth century, Sevruguin managed and operated one of the most successful commercial photography studios in Tehran. He was born in Iran, but his mother returned with her family to her hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, after his father, Vassil, a Russian diplomat in Iran, died in a horse-riding accident.

Sevruguin trained to become a painter. Accompanied by his two brothers, he returned to Iran in the early 1870s and established a photography studio first in Tabriz and then in Tehran. Sevruguin’s ties to Tbilisi, however, continued through the years. Many of the early portraits of dervishes and women have been simultaneously attributed to Antoin Sevruguin and Dimitri Yermakov, the Georgian photographer who is often referred to as Sevruguin’s mentor.

As early as 1885 many of Sevruguin’s photographs were being published in travelogues, journals and books. By that time he had fully established a studio on Tehran’s Ala al-Dawla Street and cemented ties to the court of the Qajar ruler Nasser ad-Din Shah (reigned 1848—96). He received the Medal of the Lion and Sun from the shah.

His works are preserved at several prestigious museums and collections across the world, including the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington.

The Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad, a Moscow state-financed cultural institution, opened in 2018 to bring together and research the cultural legacy of the Russian expatriate community, as well as to establish and strengthen bonds with Russians living abroad.

In a visit to the museum, Iranian Ambassador Kazem Jalali praised the museum’s plan to accumulate works by Russian expatriate artists, and said that he will do his best to help the museum in that mission.

He also held a meeting with the director of the museum, Viktor Moskvin, who expressed his thanks to the University of Tehran and the Iranian Culture Center in Moscow for their contributions to the exhibition.

The Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad is a unique center that consists of a museum, archive, library, science and research center, information and publishing center, and cultural and education center.

Courtesy of Tehran Times