The studio of this Russian-born photographer was founded in Alexandrapol (Gyumri) sometime in the 1900s and operated until the end of the 1910s.(1) The name of the pavilion suggests that it was primarily targeted the Russian population of the city, mostly servicing the staff and the soldiers of Alexandrapole’s Imperial army garrison, together with their families. Molchanov's portraits are highly conventional and mechanically crafted. They are more interesting today as visual documents of Gyumri’s multicultural, pre-soviet past. No other biographical records have come to light.

1) A photographer by the name of Ivan Molchanov was stationed in Odessa at the turn of the 20th century, but we could ascertain with certainty whether this was the same person working in Gyumri.

Vigen Galstyan, 2018