There are no precise facts pertaining to the activities of Kh. Ter-Asaturov, who worked at a number of small towns in Russia’s Stavropol region at the beginning of the 20th century. Judging from his photographs, Ter-Asaturov founded his business in Gyorgievsk at the end of the 1890s and later moved to the nearby town of Zheleznovodsk. Being one of the few photographers working in these settlements, Ter-Asaturov photographed any paying member of the local population. The photographer specialised only in portraits, which he shot both indoors and outdoors. Amidst these, of special interest are the portraits of locals posing as Caucasian ‘ethnographic types’ by donning folk costumes. The photographer’s studio appears to have closed after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016