Igor Palmin was born in Stalingrad (Volgograd) in 1933 His work in photography began in the mid-1960s when he became a cameraman at the Laboratory for Scientific and Applied Photography and Cinematography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and later came to the Novator photo club and began to take part in group exhibitions.
Since 1966, Igor Palmin has become close to the circle of nonconformists. He not only carefully communicated with artists but also shot their portraits and life. Ernst Neizvestny, Vladimir Nemukhin, Dmitry Plavinsky, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev and Vladimir Weisberg — all fall into the lens of Palmin. Today, these photographs are becoming a mandatory documentary component of nonconformist exhibitions. Informal art greatly influenced his photographic techniques.
With his central theme — architecture, Igor Palmin began to work in the 1980s. At first, he made reproductions of design graphics for Soviet avant-garde architects of the 1920s. Finally, the theme of architecture became decisive for Palmin while working on the book by E. Borisova and G. Sternin, «Russian Modern». The experience with the drawings affected his work with photography, in which he retains a vision of graphic forms. At the same time, Igor Palmin still considers documentary the main feature of photography. Both portraits and architecture, he shoots mostly full-face, without using sharp angles, sophisticated optical techniques, and subsequent processing of the frame.
The author’s collaboration with the publishing houses «Art», «Soviet Artist», «Soviet Writer» became the books «Russian Modern» (1990), «Moscow Mansions» (1997), «Russian Neoclassicism» (2002), «Other Art» (2005 ) and many others. For books «Russian Modern» and «Russian Neoclassicism» Palmin was awarded the State Prize in the field of literature and art (2003).
