A unique ethnographic photo expedition “Burlatsky on the Volga. Along the Roads of Maxim Dmitriev” visited the Tsagan-Aman khurul

The photographic artist and Russian Geographical Society member Misha Burlatsky, together with assistants and the film crew of documentary director Alexandra Andronova, traveled the Volga from its source to its mouth along the route of the great Nizhny Novgorod photographer Maxim Dmitriev. Their task is to capture the residents of the Volga region on glass plates and to make a documentary film about it.

In a month and a half, the expedition team covered more than 4,500 kilometers by land and water across the territory of ten regions of the Volga region, from Tver to Astrakhan region. The heroes of the project are Volga dwellers of various professions and nationalities. Thanks to 19th-century technology and the skill of Misha Burlatsky, viewers will be able to see the Volga and its people close to the way Maxim Dmitriev saw them more than 120 years ago.

From the source of the Volga to Nizhny Novgorod, the expedition traveled in a specially equipped mobile laboratory. From Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan — on the vessel “Volga” of the shipping company Volzhskoye Parokhodstvo (JSC “Volga-Flot”). The start of the ship stage took place on July 5 from the River Station of Nizhny Novgorod. From Kazan to Astrakhan — again in the mobile laboratory.

In Tsagan-Aman, the film crew was met by the abbot of the khurul, Gen Jinpa Gyatso, and representatives of the local Buddhist community. During the day, the crew carried out filming both inside the khurul and on its grounds. On a camera more than a hundred years old, Mikhail Burlatsky captured a prayer service, the believers of the village, as well as the rich interior decoration of the khurul.
Photo exhibitions and presentations of the film will be held in the fall of 2021 at the headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg and in Nizhny Novgorod in the exhibition space of Volzhskoye Parokhodstvo in the building of the River Station. The documentary film will then be handed over to Russian distributors for festival promotion and theatrical release.

The project “Burlatsky on the Volga. Along the Roads of Maxim Dmitriev” is being implemented by the Center for the Development of Regional Cinematography “Kinofaktura” under the leadership of Evgeny Kudelnikov with a grant from the Russian Geographical Society and with the support of JSC “Shipping Company Volzhskoye Parokhodstvo,” ANO “Center 800,” the company “Rostelecom,” Kutuzov Photo and Canon Russia.

The main idea of the project is to unite and present to a wide audience the works of two outstanding Russian photographic artists, members of the Russian Geographical Society from two different centuries.

The first of them, Maxim Dmitriev, is a famous photographic artist who lived and worked in Russia at the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dmitriev became famous for carrying out a whole series of photo expeditions across the Volga basin. Thanks to them, the views and types of the peoples of the Volga region who inhabited the great Russian river at that time have been preserved.

As part of the expedition, the second photographic artist — the contemporary ambrotypist Misha Burlatsky — will set off along Dmitriev's routes to capture the types of peoples inhabiting the Volga today. Burlatsky works in the technique of wet-collodion photography, visually reminiscent of Dmitriev's works.