A comprehensive exhibition titled “Photographic Art. From Daguerreotype to Artificial Intelligence” is set to take place at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall from July 15 to October 5, 2025. This ambitious project will showcase the evolution of photography from its earliest forms to its modern digital iterations.

The exhibition will feature approximately six hundred works by one hundred and seventy-eight photographers, including renowned figures such as Louis Daguerre, William Carrick, Karl Bulla, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Boris Smelov, Boris Orlov, Sergei Borisov, and Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe.

The project is a joint creation with the Beton Center for Visual Arts, with curators Olga Michi, a collector and artist, and Alexei Loginov, the founder of Beton and a collector and photography historian, leading the effort.

The exhibition aims to trace the development of photographic language and techniques, beginning with the emergence of the medium in the 1830s and its early daguerreotypes. A key highlight of this section will be the triple author’s daguerreotype presented by Louis Daguerre to Nicholas I in 1839. Works by Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg, William Carrick, and Karl Bergamasco will also be featured.

The late 19th-century movement of Pictorialism, where photography sought to emulate painting, will be represented through works by Andrei Karelin, Alexei Mazurin, Sergei Lobovikov, Alexander Grinberg, and Nikolai Svishchov-Paola.

Photographic avant-garde and the subsequent social realism movements will be prominently featured, with photographs by Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Boris Ignatovich, Arkady Shaikhet, and Georgy Petrusov on display. The period of the Great Patriotic War will be documented through photographs by Max Alpert, Yevgeny Khaldei, Dmitry Baltermants, and Mikhail Trakhman.

The exhibition will also explore the period from the post-war era to 2000, showcasing photographs by nonconformist artists such as Sergei Borisov, Valery Plotnikov, Igor Makarevich, Olga Chernysheva, and Alexei Titarenko.

The final section of the project will focus on 21st-century photography, highlighting the use of digital editing and neural network images in contemporary photographic art.