Andrey (Genrikh Ivanovich) Den'yer

(b ?St Petersburg, 1820; d ?St Petersburg, 1892). Russian photographer. He studied at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, probably intending to become a painter. He graduated in 1849 and in 1851 opened a daguerreotype portrait studio in St Petersburg. Den'yer was very much a part of the St Petersburg artistic milieu and represents an important early link between photography and the academic tradition. He attempted to bring to his portraits the knowledge and experience he had gained at the Academy, as can be seen in his portrait of the poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1864; Muranov, Tyutchev Estate-Mus., see Morozov, 1977, fig. 3), with its strong pose and effective use of vignetting. He also set high standards in retouching, using professional artists, notably Ivan Kramskoy. His contacts with the Academy (especially his photographic portraits of its professors) were important in gaining recognition for photography as a fine art. He was one of the first in Russia to make photographic reproductions of artists' pictures, and his own photographic portraits were in turn used by painters (especially Kramskoy, who made use of Den'yer's portrait of Tyutchev in 1883). In 1865 Den'yer published an album of well-known faces of Russia, designed as a carte-de-visite album.

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