Studio St. Petersburg

In her previous books on Versailles and Newport, photographer Deborah Turbeville has succeeded in brilliantly evoking the moods, auras, ghosts, and allure of each place’s past glories. Now, in her new book, she turns to the fabled capital of imperial Russia and its dark successor, Leningrad. Based on repeated visits to St. Petersburg over the last two years, Studio St. Petersburg is a passionate and highly personal exploration of the Russian people and their turbulent history. In haunting, dreamlike images of grand and extravagant Czarist palaces (many in ruins), churches, and other buildings, as well as the faces and figures of the Russian people — ballerinas, actors, officials, and workers, pictured both in tightly cropped closeups and orchestrated scenes — Turbeville creates a powerful, intuitive portrait of St. Petersburg. With brief texts drawn from the memoirs of artists and writers who experienced both Czarist and Communist rule, Studio St. Petersburg brilliantly summons up the lost world of imperial St. Petersburg and the embattled, brilliant culture of the Soviet era.