The exhibition at Winzavod Moscow Contemporary Art Center aims to reveal this bright and original phenomenon, showing off the pride of Russian photo art from all possible angles. Until May 2009, Lapin’s school had no official presentation in Russia. Lapin worked out his own approach to photographic art and has always been treating it no less serious than other art mediums.

“Where is a photograph being born? It’s not my Nikon where the light meets the shade to give birth to a black-grey-white something that will be admired if not by everyone then at least by many. It is known that great music is created in heavens and poetry is written with blood. But what heavens, where does blood come from? Photography is life as it is,” Lapin writes in his book “Photography as…”.

Throughout thirty years Lapin was engaged in teaching photo art. While there was a serious lack of schools teaching photography, most photographers were self-made. Lapin was the one who couldn’t stand aside and filled this seriously-wanting educational niche himself, creating his own studio of artistic photography. A number of top modern Russian photographers now consider Lapin their teacher.

Lapin is the author of two basic textbooks on photography, which were and still are being repeatedly republished and widely used by students as the basic text of their landsmen. Currently he is teaching students at Moscow State University.

The exhibition at Winzavod is on through to June 15. A total of about 300 photo works are there to form a new image of Russian photography of the present time.