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Nikolai Drachinsky (1917–1978)
Photojournalist • Curator • Artist • Experimenter
This website is dedicated to the work of Nikolai Ivanovich Drachinsky, a pioneering figure in Russian photography whose career bridged journalism, artistic practice, and curatorial innovation.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Drachinsky worked as both writer and photographer, with millions of readers following his reports in Ogonyok magazine. His archive from this period is among the most complete records of how color photography was explored in the Soviet press.
Between 1969 and 1976, he directed and curated USSR: The Country and Its People in Artistic Photographs. Presented in the five largest cities of the United States (1970), the USSR (with landmark shows in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv in 1970–1971), and more than 120 countries worldwide, the exhibition gathered 2,000 photographs by 500 authors from across the Soviet Union. Beyond press photographers, it included works by artists, cinematographers, and amateurs — groups absent from official exhibitions since 1937. In scale and complexity, the project rivaled Edward Steichen’s iconic The Family of Man.
In his final years (1976–1978), Drachinsky turned to experimental work in color, developing a process he called multicontour. His aim was to expand the expressive possibilities of photography, granting the artist new control over color and opening the medium to a force and freedom of expression then unprecedented in Soviet practice.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Drachinsky worked as both writer and photographer, with millions of readers following his reports in Ogonyok magazine. His archive from this period is among the most complete records of how color photography was explored in the Soviet press.
Between 1969 and 1976, he directed and curated USSR: The Country and Its People in Artistic Photographs. Presented in the five largest cities of the United States (1970), the USSR (with landmark shows in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv in 1970–1971), and more than 120 countries worldwide, the exhibition gathered 2,000 photographs by 500 authors from across the Soviet Union. Beyond press photographers, it included works by artists, cinematographers, and amateurs — groups absent from official exhibitions since 1937. In scale and complexity, the project rivaled Edward Steichen’s iconic The Family of Man.
In his final years (1976–1978), Drachinsky turned to experimental work in color, developing a process he called multicontour. His aim was to expand the expressive possibilities of photography, granting the artist new control over color and opening the medium to a force and freedom of expression then unprecedented in Soviet practice.
