Orphaned early, Sergei Lobovikov (= Сергей Лобовиков, 1870-1941) was sent at the age of 14 from a village to the provincial town of Vyatka (now Kirov), where he would later become an honorary citizen. He was meant to be trained as a shopkeeper and photographer. The rest is history that you should mostly see (he never became a shopkeeper).

There’s little color to be seen or needed in the work of photographer Aleksey Myakishev (Алексей Мякишев). Born (1971) in Kirov (or Киров), formerly called Vyatka until 1934 and still sometimes referred to as such. Vyatka is also the name of one of Myakishev’s most famous projects, the photo series (2014) in which he captured the people and life of his home region.