Alexander Petrosyan was born in Lviv and moved to St. Petersburg with his family in 1976. He received his first camera as a birthday gift when he turned 13, and since that time photography has been his passion. While he was growing up in the Soviet Union, world photography, like many other arts, was still hidden behind the Iron Curtain. After spending days in the library, graduating from Saint-Petersburg State Institute of Culture, and studying all the available secrets of his craft, he became a self-made master. He developed his inimitable style mainly through trial-and-error and the visual impressions he absorbed. Petrosyan often utilizes the grotesque and contrast to illuminate the absurdity of life situations. Writer Tatyana Tolstaya calls his style gogolini, a lexical blend from the names Gogol and Fellini. His style is recognizable by his distinct vision of the context and a capture of characters’ interaction within this context.