Ariadna Krylova — photographer, gallerist, art director, curator of exhibition and educational projects, art historian, and photography educator. Collector and art dealer.
In 2019, she took part in the V Photobiennale of Contemporary Photography, established by the Russian Museum. Her works were subsequently acquired for the museum’s collection.
Founder of the online gallery of contemporary and antique art PHOSPHORUS (2025).
Co-founder of the contemporary photography gallery White Rainbow (2023–2025).
EDUCATION
In 2021, she graduated from the St. Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television (SPBGIKiT) with a degree in Folk Artistic Culture, majoring in Studio Management for Film, Photo, and Video Art.
She has attended masterclasses and studied with renowned photographers such as Gueorgui Pinkhassov (MAGNUM PHOTOS), Valery Plotnikov, Anna Shakina, and others.
FOCUS OF PRACTICE
Her primary focus is the promotion and support of contemporary Russian art, with a particular emphasis on the medium of photography. Ariadna organizes and curates exhibition projects and educational programs: lectures, workshops, film screenings, portfolio reviews, as well as online and offline meetings with contemporary authors. As an art director, she develops artistic concepts and visual solutions for both creative and commercial projects in the fields of art and science.
She researches the current state of the art market, tracing new tendencies and directions in both art and collecting. She also assists in the formation of private collections: through dialogue with collectors, she identifies their interests and selects works that combine artistic expressiveness with investment potential.
Ariadna is a frequent speaker at international and Russian forums, conferences, and discussions, presenting contemporary photographic art to a broad audience.
GALLERY PHOSPHORUS
In 2025, Ariadna founded the online gallery PHOSPHORUS — a project that brings together contemporary Russian art and rare antique works.
PHOSPHORUS represents artists working in the fields of conceptual art, expressionism, and “Russian gothic.” The uniqueness of the project lies in its combination of cutting-edge art objects with rare antique engravings, as well as in uniting different media — photography, graphics, painting, and sculpture — into a single decadent symphony. PHOSPHORUS creates a space for art that illuminates the path in darkness and stands as an antagonist to conventional interior formats.
The gallery does not have a permanent physical space; instead, its strategy is to stage exhibitions at partner venues, reassembling context and revealing new scenarios for the interaction of art and site.
Artists include: Victoria Iva, Ivan Turukhano, Dmitry Pryakhin, Sergey Shcherbakov, Timur Etot, Ariadna Krylova, among others.
GALLERY WHITE RAINBOW (2023–2025)
From 2023 to 2025, Ariadna was co-founder, creative director, and head of two institutions: the contemporary photography gallery White Rainbow and the photo lab Belaya Raduga (White Rainbow Lab) in St. Petersburg (www.white-rainbow.ru).
Under her leadership, the project made a significant contribution to the development of photographic art in Russia. Her team and represented artists became pioneers in establishing a unique center of contemporary photography in St. Petersburg — a space that embodied a harmonious triad: gallery (exhibition center), photo laboratory, and artistic community.
In less than a year, the struggling and nearly closed Belaya Raduga was transformed into a sustainable institution that not only became profitable but also expanded into two fully operating galleries in central St. Petersburg. During Ariadna’s directorship, the institution actively explored new tendencies, introduced emerging artists, and realized over 20 exhibition projects between 2023 and 2025, alongside more than 100 portfolio reviews, lectures, workshops, art mediations, meetings with authors, and film screenings on photography. More than 500 works of varying formats and price ranges found their collectors.
Contact for collaboration:
krylovaariadna@gmail.com
ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Ariadna’s fascination with photography began in early childhood and immediately became an essential part of her life — both as a way of perceiving reality and as a safe form of communication with the outside world. From 2011 to 2023, her creative research focused on portrait and documentary photography, as well as on staged artistic processes.
Today, Ariadna turns her attention to the phenomenon of “liminal spaces” — transitional zones where human presence is perceived only as a trace left by time.
Since 2016, she has actively worked with analog and other chemical processes, experimenting with narrow and medium-format film, including manual development, processing, post-production, printing, and retouching.
One of the pivotal milestones in Ariadna’s artistic biography is her work “Children.” Exhibited in 2019 at the Marble Palace, the work was later acquired by the collection of the Russian Museum.
Exhibitions
2025 — Out of Time, group photography exhibition, l’appartement 83, Moscow, Russia
2019 — V Photobiennale of Contemporary Photography, Marble Palace, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia