My wife, Tamara, and I came up with the idea of an old-school photo studio from several sources.

First, Tamara and I studied photography and art history in university; we wrote articles about photography in magazines and participated in contemporary art and photo exhibitions. At the same time, we worked as wedding/event photographers in Moscow, Russia. That industry demanded ultra-sugary photoshop effects that were very far from our ideals and tastes. We realized that we could use our darkroom printing skills to change the rules and offer the industry something new. The other benefits were zero competition, and no need to constantly upgrade our equipment, as we did for commercial photography. However, the idea itself was not enough because there wasn’t any equipment, devices and materials suitable for our goals. So, it took a couple years to develop the whole process, find vintage cameras and rare portable developing darkrooms. We also had to invent our own cassettes, timers and other stuff; adapt chemicals, paper, etc.