Background
Nappel’baum, Moisei was born in 1869 in Minsk.
Nappel’baum, Moisei was born in 1869 in Minsk.
An apprentice at the Boretti Photographic Studio, 1884. Three years later, moved first to Smolensk, then Moscow, Odessa. Warsaw, Vilnius, Evpatoria, and eventually to the USA. In 1895, returned to Minsk and opened a studio of portrait photography.
His portrait work appeared for the first time in 1910 in one of the best illustrated magazines of the time, Solntse Rossii, published in Petersburg. Became a renowned photographer and technician whose lighting and backgrounds in particular were much admired. Photographed a series of political leaders, writers and artists, among them Dzerzhinskii, Vorovskii and Lunacharskii.
In 1919, with Sverdlov’s support, set up the first State Photographic Studio of the Central Executive Committee Exhibitions were held in Petrograd, 1918, and in Moscow, 1935, 1946 and 1955. His monograph From Craft to Art was published in 1958. His photographs of Aleksandr Blok, the young Anna Akhmatova, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergei Esenin, Aleksandr Glazunov, and Vladimir Tatlin are among the best examples of Russian photography.