An archive of photographs of an unknown genius Masha Ivashintsova was discovered in St. Petersburg

Masha Ivashintsova was a lost photographer of Leningrad. Throughout her life, from 1942 to 2000, she took pictures, but never showed her work.

At the end of last year, Maria's daughter's husband came across boxes full of undeveloped film and negatives in the attic of their old house. The images published here — some of them for the first time — represent only a small part of the 30 thousand images found — but this is enough to take a fresh look at St. Petersburg and its inhabitants.

Self-portrait.

Playground in Leningrad. In her youth, Ivashintsova followed her grandmother's wish and began studying to be a ballerina, but after her grandmother's death, her parents took Masha from the academy, enrolling her in a technical specialty.

Street portrait in St. Petersburg in 1976. After her artistic career was interrupted, Ivashintsova tried herself at various jobs — for example, as a theater critic. And her personal life was experiencing more and more upheavals.

The bank of the Neva River in 1979.

Children from Vologda — 1979.

Melvar with their only daughter, Asya. In the same year that this photo was taken — 1976, the family split up. Asya moved to her father in Moscow, and Maria stayed in St. Petersburg.

Asya — 1978.

The crowd at the parade on May 1 in St. Petersburg, 1979.

While in Leningrad, Ivashintsova was in an unstable love relationship with the poet Viktor Krivulin (pictured) and photographer Boris Smelov.

Ivashintsova and the popular photographer Boris Smelov.

Portrait of a "growing Soviet engineer in fashionable Soviet-French clothes". The diaries left by Ivashintsova give out a woman who gave a very modest assessment of her talents compared to the men of her life. Her daughter says that she "sincerely believed that she was fading next to them, and therefore never showed her work to anyone."

Despite her daily passion for photography, Ivashintsova suffered from depression, which is why she stopped working in 1981.

The parade of Communists in St. Petersburg. In a state where unemployment was criminally punishable, Maria was expected to be imprisoned or imprisoned in a mental hospital.

Ivashintsova's family says that she chose a mental hospital and after 10 years was mentally broken by the cruel system of treatment of patients.

A monkey on a chain. "Sometimes, looking at this photo, I think I see some tragic prediction of what my mother had to go through," Asya shared.

A fragment of the monument to Stalin in St. Petersburg.