The First International Photo Festival was held on October 24-27 in Suzdal, in "Pushkarskaya Sloboda" Hotel. Organizers expect to make the festival an annual event and to turn Suzdal into Russia’s main photographic stage.

      This year's forum was dedicated to fine-art photography, presented in traditional genres like portrait, landscape, still life and in today's quite trendy digital-art and conceptual styles. All who take part, regardless of their level of professionalism, were able to join the photo contest on a given topic, to attend seminars on modern printing, to get some knowledge about analog photographic processes and to attend a workshop on staged photography. Roundtables and speeches of photography masters such as Svetlana Pozharskaya, Vladimir Vyatkin, Sergei Borisov, Nicholai Kulebyakin, Sergei Potapov, Algimantas Aleksandryavichus, Sergei Skuratov and of other well-known artists also took part. The best works of "RusArtFoto 2013"contest have been displayed at exhibition in "Suzdal" Hotel. 

      Suzdal is a town and the administrative center of Suzdalsky District of Vladimir Oblast, Russia, situated northeast of Moscow. Today, the town operates as an important tourist center, featuring many fine examples of old Russian architecture — most of them churches and monasteries. Walking through the town one might get the feeling that every third building is a church.