The most famous people of the era posed for Moses Nappelbaum, the owner of two photography studios in Moscow – from Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak to Vladimir Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky. In 1928, the photographer took one of the most successful portraits of Mikhail Bulgakov. A new building now stands at this address on the corner of Kuznesky Most and Petrovka.

Nikolay Chukovsky wrote the following of Nappelbaum: ‘He wore loose velvet jackets and a kind of cape… He retouched his photos so it looked as if there was something of Rembrandt’s work in them.’ Bulgakov loved to be photographed and readily gave his pictures out to his friends and family with autographs and friendly notes. Some of these photographs became very well known, for example the photograph with a monocle, taken in 1926, which horrified his friends with his ostentatiousness and bourgeoisness (the monocle then frequently appeared in caricatures of Bulgakov). In Nappelbaum’s photography studio on Kuznetsky Most, another famous portrait of Bulgakov was taken. It was taken in 1928, an extremely difficult year for the writer: the Main Repertoire Committee banned the staging of his play The Run, and his popular plays Zoyka’s Apartment and The Days of the Turbins were also pulled from the theatre repertoires by the same authorities.