On May 16, 2025, the L. N. T. Cultural and Exhibition Center opened a new exhibition from the Belgorod State Literary Museum titled Glass “Demons.” The exhibit features photographic works created using an antique process that illustrate Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Demons.
The exhibition is the result of artist Pavel Titovich’s creative search, using the ambrotype technique—a photographic process developed in the early 1850s by British inventor Frederick Scott Archer, which captures images on glass plates. This technique inspired the exhibition’s title, emphasizing its “glass” nature.
The collection presents a modern photographic artist’s interpretation of what the characters in Demons might have looked like. According to the exhibition’s creators, had these fictional figures been real people, they might well have been captured “on glass” even in Dostoevsky’s time.
“I wanted every person who posed for the ambrotypes to truly inhabit their character. I needed to build a kind of psychological portrait. I would look at a living person and ask myself: Could Stavrogin or Verkhovensky have lived in this face?”— says Pavel Titovich.
A total of 25 ambrotypes inspired by Demons will be displayed at the L. N. T. Center. Visitors will also have the opportunity to peek inside the photographer’s studio and learn how these images appear on glass plates, as well as explore the tools and materials essential to the craft.
Background information
Pavel Titovich is a member of the FIAP (Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique) and the Russian Union of Art Photographers. He is the only ambrotype artist in Belgorod, and his works are held in the State Russian Museum, the Belgorod State Art Museum, and in private collections in Russia, France, the U.S., the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain.
His series of ambrotypes “Characters from Dostoevsky’s Novel Demons” was awarded the Grand Prix at the All-Russian “Argus” competition “Photography Among the Arts”, and took first place in the category “The Word and Its Embodiment: Theater, Literature, Poetry.”
The exhibition is the result of artist Pavel Titovich’s creative search, using the ambrotype technique—a photographic process developed in the early 1850s by British inventor Frederick Scott Archer, which captures images on glass plates. This technique inspired the exhibition’s title, emphasizing its “glass” nature.
The collection presents a modern photographic artist’s interpretation of what the characters in Demons might have looked like. According to the exhibition’s creators, had these fictional figures been real people, they might well have been captured “on glass” even in Dostoevsky’s time.
“I wanted every person who posed for the ambrotypes to truly inhabit their character. I needed to build a kind of psychological portrait. I would look at a living person and ask myself: Could Stavrogin or Verkhovensky have lived in this face?”— says Pavel Titovich.
A total of 25 ambrotypes inspired by Demons will be displayed at the L. N. T. Center. Visitors will also have the opportunity to peek inside the photographer’s studio and learn how these images appear on glass plates, as well as explore the tools and materials essential to the craft.
Background information
Pavel Titovich is a member of the FIAP (Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique) and the Russian Union of Art Photographers. He is the only ambrotype artist in Belgorod, and his works are held in the State Russian Museum, the Belgorod State Art Museum, and in private collections in Russia, France, the U.S., the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain.
His series of ambrotypes “Characters from Dostoevsky’s Novel Demons” was awarded the Grand Prix at the All-Russian “Argus” competition “Photography Among the Arts”, and took first place in the category “The Word and Its Embodiment: Theater, Literature, Poetry.”
Posted : 14 may 2025