Naum Granovsky foundation

Our work with the Naum Granovsky Foundation began in 2001. The Granovsky family carefully preserved and systematized the archive created by the author for over 60 years. In 2017, the Lumiere Gallery acquired the copyright and the Naum Granovsky Foundation (now there are about 400 prints and 35,000 negatives) and today is the only copyright holder exclusively representing the master’s works.

Over the past 19 years, we have held several personal exhibitions:

2020 — “Moscow of Naum Granovsky 1920 – 1980”. Anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 110th anniversary of Naum Granovsky, Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography (Moscow, Russia)

2015 —”Grand style of Naum Granovsky”. Anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 105th anniversary of Naum Granovsky, Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography (Moscow, Russia)

2010 — “Moscow of Naum Granovsky”. Anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of N. Granovsky. Lumiere Brothers Photo Gallery (Moscow, Russia)

2005 — “City of the Sun”. Personal exhibition of Naum Granovsky, Lumiere Brothers Photo Gallery (Moscow, Russia)

2004 — Personal exhibition of Naum Granovsky, Lumiere Brothers Photo Gallery (Moscow, Russia)

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography used the unique prints of Naum Granovsky in many projects dedicated to the study of Soviet photography: Moscow Photographic Collections (2006), Anthology of Russian Photography of the 20th Century (series from 2007), Moscow Stories. XX century “(2013). Two monographs were published: “Moscow of Naum Granovsky” (2009), “Naum Granovsky. 20th – 80th “(2020).

The purpose of creating the website of the Naum Granovsky Foundation is to unite on a single platform all the photographs. These recognized masterpieces have participated in exhibitions of different years, published in books, as well as little-known frames that we found during our research work with the archive, providing access to them to the broadest possible audience.

Today, the foundation’s website features 500 cult works of the chief architectural photographer of the capital, as well as pictures from his numerous trips to the cities of the USSR. The search for photographs is carried out in several ways: by city, by chronology, by name or by keyword. The section with the shooting of Moscow is the most complete, it combines the shots taken by Granovsky in the period from the 20s to the 80s. Photos in other sections (shooting of the cities of the USSR: Volgograd, Kyiv, Minsk, Smolensk, Vladimir, Kuibyshev, Voronezh, Chisinau, Baku, Tbilisi, Riga) are presented for the period of the 50s – 60s.

Naum Granovsky (1910 – 1984) began his career at an early age, at the age of 16 he came to Moscow from his hometown of Alexandria (Ukraine) and got a job as a laboratory assistant at the TASS Press Cliché. From 1927 he worked as a correspondent for the TASS Photo Chronicle, and from 1934 as a photo master of the Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo publishing house (IZOGIZ). Since the beginning of this period, Granovsky began to consistently film and depict the way Moscow grew and changed with every year.

“Moscow chronicler”, “chief architectural photographer of the USSR” – Granovsky was professed by his contemporaries. For more than half a century, Moscow remained the main character in Granovsky’s photographs, he looked at her as a living person, noting all the changes that were happening to her. He came to the same streets and squares, consistently collecting the changing image of Moscow in the 20th century. Of course, his work was a great success not only in the capital but also abroad. Residents of many cities would like to see their native land through the lens of Granovsky.

On Sverdlov square on the day of the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Moscow (Naum Granovsky with with a camera) 07.09.1947
From the collection of the Museum of Moscow

In 1941, he was a military photojournalist for the “Trevoga” newspaper, filmed a lot on the front lines and captured the heroic defence of Moscow. Three albums with photographs of military chronicles and Granovsky are now in the Central Museum of the Armed Forces.

In 1946, Naum Granovsky returned to TASS Photo Chronicle and worked there for the rest of the years. In this period, he began to travel all over the USSR, architects and sculptors from Moscow, Stalingrad ( Volgograd well ), Kiev and Minsk and Smolensk and Vladimir and, Kuibyshev and Samara, Voronezh and, Tallinn, Baku, Tbilisi, Riga and Granovskiy have entrusted photography of his works. In many of these cities, he stayed only a few days. Still, even for such a short period, he was able to capture the spirit of post-war prosperity of cities and the development of Soviet architecture.

The Naum Granovsky Negative Foundation is one of the few photographic sources covering the geography of the former USSR so widely. Much of what he filmed in the 50s – 80s no longer exists or is in decline today: the largest outdoor swimming pool in the USSR “Moscow” and the Ferris wheel loved by many in Gorky Park were demolished, one of the first Soviet hotels in Baku – “Intourist” (as well as Moscow – “Intourist” and “Russia”), the sanatoriums “Shakhtar” and “Tsentrosoyuz” in Tskhaltubo have long been abandoned. The surviving footage of a vanishing heritage is a valuable resource for the preservation of cultural and historical memory.

In the 1960s, the Progress Publishing House issued sets of postcards with views of Soviet cities, which were filmed by Granovsky, as well as several series of postcards “Moscow Old and New”, where his early photographs are compared with contemporary photographs at that time.

From the late 70s to 1985, Granovsky’s photographs were published in the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva under a particular heading “Moscow Yesterday and Today”, which compared the shots he took from the same shooting point in the 30s-40s and 70s.

The works of Naum Granovsky were highly appreciated during his lifetime. He was a participant in major Soviet and foreign exhibitions, the author of several books and albums, an honoured cultural worker of the RSFSR (1968), a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR (1958), and also a member of the Union of Architects of the USSR. In 2017, the Lumiere Gallery acquired the copyright and the Naum Granovsky Foundation and today is the only copyright holder who exclusively represents the master’s works.

All works posted on the site are protected by copyright. Any posting not agreed with the copyright holder of the photographs is a violation of copyright and entails consequences under the provisions of the federal law on copyright and related rights of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

Gorky Park. Pushkinskaya embankment. 1950s

Moscow Defence. A reconnaissance scout on the roof of Hotel Moskva. 1942

Moscow Defence. An aerostat at Nikitsky Gate. 1943

Moscow Defence. An anti-aircraft gun over Mayakovsky Square. The roof of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. 1941

Moscow Defence. An anti-aircraft battery at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. 1941

Captured Germans on the Garden Ring Road. 1944

Moscow Defence. An aerostat on Sverdlov Square. 1942

Baku. New school. 1950s

Baku. Museum. 1950s

Baku. 1950s

Baku. Academy. 1950s

Baku. 1950s

Baku. Medical institute residence hall. 1950s

Baku. 1950s

Baku. Conservatory. 1950

Baku. Nizami Museum of Azerbaijani Literature. 1950s

Baku. Inturist hotel. 1950s

Baku. Kirov Monument. 1950s

Tbilisi. View of the city. 1965

Tbilisi. Cableway station. 1965

Tbilisi State University. 1965

Tbilisi. View of the city from the funicular. 1965

Tbilisi. Department store. 1965

Tbilisi. State University building. 1965

Tbilisi. Railway station. 1965

Tbilisi. Hotel Colkhety. 1965

Tbilisi. Palace of Sports. 1965

Tbilisi. In a new residential area. 1965

Tbilisi. Palace of Sports. 1965

Tbilisi. 1965

Tbilisi. Swimming pool. 1965

Tsqaltubo. Mineral water source. 1965

Tbilisi. View of the monument to Lenin on Freedom Square

Tbilisi. Kura river view. 1965

Tbilisi. 1965

Tbilisi. The airport. 1965

2020
“Moscow of Naum Granovsky 1920 — 1980”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow

2018
“The Soviet Century: Russian Photography from the Lafuente Archive (1917-1972)”, PhotoEspaña18, Madrid

2017
“Masters of Soviet photojournalism”, PhotoVisa, Krasnodar
“Revolution of people”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow, Russia

2016
“Big style of Naum Granovsky”, Lumiere Brothers center for photography, Moscow, Russia
“Urban transport of the USSR”, VDNH, Moscow
“GAUDEAMUS: From the history of Russian students”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow

2015
“Soviet photo”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow, Russia

2013
“Moscow stories. Of the twentieth century. Part II (1960-1990)”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow

2012
“Modern Russian photography, late 1940s-2012”, FotoFest Biennial, Houston, Texas, USA
“Collection of the Lumiere Brothers Photo Gallery. Anniversary exhibition”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow

2011
“Moscow stories. XX century. Part I”, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow

2010
“Moscow Naum Granovsky”, anniversary exhibition for the 100th anniversary of N. Granovsky, Lumiere Brothers Center for photography, Moscow, Russia
“Soviet photo art of the 60s-70s”, Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow

2008
“Anthology of Russian photography of XX century. Photo 60-70”, Lumiere Brothers Gallery, Moscow

2004
“Moscow. 1930-1970’s”, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia
“Photo relay: from Rodchenko to the present day”, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia

Moscow Of Naum Granovsky 1920 – 1980

The new exhibition of Naum Granovsky's work is a large retrospective project that combines famous photographs of old Moscow from the 20s and the Stalin era, as well as lesser-known works created by Granovsky during the period of Soviet modernism.

Naum Granovsky’s Grand Style

More than 100 iconic photographs of Naum Granovsky and pictures from his numerous trips across the country, previously unseen by the public.

Soviet Photo

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography marks its 5th anniversary by the exhibition that spans the history of Soviet and Russian photography of the 20th century as seen through the magazine Soviet Photo

Moscow Stories. XX century. Part II (1960s — 1990s)

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography presents an exhibition Moscow Stories. XX century. Part II, which is the final part of a major project featuring the life of Moscow over the last 100 years. The exhibition covers the most prominent Moscow events from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, the events that have changed the face of the city and that have become a part of the personal story of each of us.

A new complete monograph Naum Granovsky 1920-1980, to mark the photographer’s 110th birthday. Granovsky became known as “the main architectural photographer of the USSR”, whose favorite city was Moscow. Today, we can see from his photographs how the image of the capital changed from the 20s to the 80s.

The album consists of 250 works — not only Granovsky’s famous shots, which have already become classics, but also his lesser-known works that the Lumiere Gallery has managed to find over the past 5 years of working with the master’s negatives. Many readers will feel nostalgic when comparing modern Moscow with the one depicted by Granovsky.

The book opens with introductory articles by Natalia Grigorieva-Litvinskaya, founder of the Lumiere Gallery, Elizaveta Likhacheva, Director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, and Elena Karisalova, the founder of the Still Art Foundation.

The book was designed by graphic designer Yevgeny Korneev.

ISBN 978-5-990613-0-6
2020 edition
304 pages
Number of copies: 1500
Printing: SIA PNB Print, Latvia

A few photographers can boast of a photograph of a city that became a symbol of the whole epoch. Naum Granovsky was able to. For a long time his shot of the night Moscow, glaring with lights that reflected in the Moskva river, used to be one of the static pictures opening th TV program “Vremya”. The album includes 150 of the best photos.