Irina Chmyreva, is a photography historian and curator of photography exhibitions based in Moscow. She has PhD in art history (2003) from Surikov Academic Art Institute in Moscow, the sphere of her interests are Russian photography, comparative visual studies and photography within the history of arts. Since 1996 she has worked as a researcher and curator in institutions such as Moscow Museum of Modern Art, ROSIZO State Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of Russia. In 2011-2015 she had been working as a curator in Iris Foundation (previously Garage CCC now Garage MCA), Moscow. Since 2002 she collaborates with FotoFest Inc., Houston, for research and curatorial programs on Contemporary Russian Photography. Chmyreva has been a member of the international editorial board of European Photography magazine 2000-2017. She runs lecture programs in visual communication and writing in British School of Design in Moscow, previously she run lecture programs in theory of photography at the Moscow Polytech - Favorsky Academy of Book Design and at the Institute of Humanities and IT, both in Moscow. She is also a guest lecturer at European Institute of Design in Madrid, Spain. Since 2007 she is working at the National Institute for Theory and History of Fine Arts, Russian Academy of Arts in a position of leading researcher. In 2008 she co-founded the International Festival of Photography PhotoVisa in Krasnodar, Russia and has been the festival's art director since.
Chmyreva is the author and co-author of several books on the history of Russian photography, among them are History of European Photography of 20th c. (Central European House of Photography, 3 volumes, 2010, 2014, 2016), Montaging Reality. Two ways of Life by O.G.Rejlander (Garage, 2011), Photographic Histories. Photography in collection of State Russian Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI, 2013), Generation’74 (Kaunas Fotofestival edition, 2014), V1945 (A.Bondar Project, 2017), Fotografía soviético / El siglo soviético. Fotografía rusa del Archivo Lafuente, 1917-1972 (La Fabrica, 2018), Her book Collection of Essays on History of Russian Photography was published in 2016. The new book Lexicon of Russian Photography was released in 2022.