Alexey Titarenko was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1962. He graduated from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad's Institute of Culture in 1983. In 1989, Nomenklatura of Signs was included in Photostroyka, a major show of new Soviet photography that toured the US. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he produced several series of photographs about the human condition of the Russian people during this time and the suffering they endured throughout the 20th century. The most well-known series of this period is City of Shadows. Inspired by the music of Shostakovich and the novels of Dostoyevsky. Titarenko's works are in the collections of major European and American museums, including The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art; the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston); the Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego); the European House of Photography (Paris); the Reattu Museum of Fine Arts (Arles); and the Musée de l'Elysée Museum for Photography (Lausanne). Alexey Titarenko lives and works in New York. He is represented by Nailya Alexander Gallery.