In the 1870s Carrick travelled to the Russian interior, visiting Simbirsk on the banks of the Volga, some seven hundred miles from St Petersburg. Here, in Russia's agricultural heartland, he encountered rural communities whose situation had improved little since the abolition of serfdom - a form of feudal bonding - in 1861. Carrick photographed the peasants at rest and in the fields, emphasising what he perceived to be the dignified and virtuous aspects of their labour.
William Carrick (Scottish, 1827 - 1878)
Born in Edinburgh, Carrick spent most of his life in Russia, where his family had been timber merchants since the previous century. After studying architecture at the St Petersburg Academy of Art, he went to Italy, returning to St Petersburg in 1856, only to discover the collapse of the timber trade from the effects of the Crimean War. He decided to take up photography as a career and came to Edinburgh to study with James Good Tunny in 1857. He set up his own studio in St Petersburg with John MacGregor in 1859. In 1858 he was questioned by the secret police after smuggling writings into Russia by the exiled revolutionary, Alexander Herzen. He was married to Alexandrina Markelova, a radical journalist and translator.
