Tver Photographers

12 points3 km4 hours

This route lets you dive into the history of photography in Tver and see stereo images of the city as it was a hundred years ago.

Route author

Tver Tourist Information Center

Things to do

📸 Take photos
📜 Learn the city's history

Route points (12)

Panov House in Tver

Point on route “Tver Photographers”

Point 6

Panov House

📜 Historic site

Description

The corner building at the intersection of Novotorzhskaya and Tryokhsvyatskaya Streets was built in the late 18th century. In the second half of the 19th century it belonged to the Panovs, a townsman family. For 60 years the Panov house was a haven for Tver photographers. One after another, the following worked here: the Saxon subject Robert Rössler (the same man who made the portrait of the Decembrist), the merchant's son Vasily Frantov, the Tver townsman N. A. Voroshilov, Yakov Ellengorn, and the hereditary honorary citizen Ivan Tachalov. Thanks to Ivan Tachalov, we know what the first Tver bus looked like and how Emperor Nicholas II came to Tver. The photographer made a historic contribution by taking many views of Tver and its surroundings in the early 20th century. Most Tver photographers preferred portraiture, and views remained a rarity.

From His Biography

Ivan Alexandrovich Tachalov, a Tver photographer of the early 20th century and a hereditary honorary citizen of Tver, was born in 1871. He opened his first studio in 1906 in the corner building at the intersection of Tryokhsvyatskaya and Novotorzhskaya Streets. He worked as a professional photographer from 1906 to 1930. In his studio's advertising posters he offered stereo photography, photos on key fobs, brooches, and cufflinks, “life-size” enlargements of portraits, and electrophotography. Tachalov could take pictures at any time of day or night because he used electric lighting (although many photographers of the time shot only by sunlight). A Tver resident named Tatiana kindly gave us a photograph of her great-grandmother, who came to Tver from Ryazan to work in the peat diggings.

A Photographic Legacy

Ivan Tachalov's great-granddaughter, Viktoria Burmistrova-Tachalova, inherited her great-grandfather's love of and interest in the profession. In 2021 she published the book “Photography by I. A. Tachalov: Early 20th-Century Tver Through the Photographer's Lens in Postcards, Photographs, and Archival Documents.” The city plans to put up a memorial plaque on the house where he lived and worked.