Igor Vishnyakov

IGOR VISHNYAKOV

Igor Vishnyakov was born in 1968 in Moscow and spent his childhood in Africa and Southeast Asia. After returning to Moscow in the mid-80’s he started painting and photographing key figures of the Russian avant-garde movement, and began to widely exhibit his work. In his youth Vishnyakov became a significant figure in the Moscow and St. Petersburg art community.

He became a permanent member of the New Academy of Fine Arts soon after it was founded by Timur Novikov in 1989. He was first made aware of alternate photographic printing processes while studying in the New Academy. Amongst other photographers such as Novikov, Egelskiy, Alexandrov, Ostrov and other Academy members, Vishnyakov was engaged in reviving precious photo printing techniques widely spread in the XIX century, such as gum arabic pigment print, bromoils, calotypes, chirotypes, carbon process, Savrasov and Sery methods and many others.

In 1990 Vishnyakov moved to New York to establish himself as a reporter and then as a fashion photographer and soon got his work published in a dozen of American and European magazines. Soon after, he continued his art education in the New York studio of a French painter, Emmanuel Flipo. Although living as an emigrant, Vishnyakov retained his connections with the Russian art world, especially with the New Academy, and participated in a number of group exhibitions. In 1997 he joined the movement that gathered neo-academics from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

His very own established technique is mixed media, combining classical photography, gum arabic pigment