Behind the Walls of the Hermitage

The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is unfathomably vast and filled with infinite objects. Amazingly, behind the walls of its galleries, completely hidden from view, are infinitely more objects in floor upon floor of storage rooms and laboratories.

In four trips to Russia in 2018-2019, Wijnanda Deroo moved through these outer-worldly environments with her camera, using available light, not displacing a thing. This book shares her revelations. The small-image strips that snake through these pages document the architectural marvels to which she was granted access, namely the historical palace buildings and the contemporary Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre, and show the immensity of the settings where the rooms in these images are hidden.

These photographs are at once dream-like and utterly without pretensions, both incredibly grand and unusually intimate. They inspire by their ordinary wonder.