Alexander Lapin

Alexander Iosifovich Lapin was a Soviet and Russian photographer, photography scholar, and teacher. He worked as a photographer for various organizations. From 1979 to 1983, he taught at the Correspondence People’s University of the Arts (ZNUI). He organized a “Studio of Artistic Photography” at the Moscow State University House of Culture (1985–1987). At Moscow State University, he held the “First Moscow Youth Exhibition” (1986), then an exhibition of Igor Mukhin (1987); he was dismissed for organizing the exhibition. From 1992 to 1997, he was a member of the commission for state prizes in the field of visual arts under the President of the Russian Federation, serving as an expert in photographic art. As a photographer, he took part in many exhibitions (Russia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Switzerland, America, England) and held five solo exhibitions in various countries. His works are held in the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as in private collections and galleries. In 2003, Alexander Lapin published the first edition of the book Photography as… , which quickly became a bestseller. The book examines the theory of black-and-white documentary photography, the laws of photographic composition, and the psychology of perception of photography. It analyzes the principles of evaluating and interpreting photographic images. In 2006, his second book, Plane and Space, or Living by the Square, was published. He teaches at the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University (photographic composition and picture editing, basics of design) and at the Academy of Classical Photography.