Cyril Arapoff and Headington
Cyril Arapoff (1898–1976) had a photographic studio in Headington from 1933 to 1938.
Born Kyril Semeonovitch Arapov, he left Russia after the Revolution and spent time in Paris and Germany before coming to England, having learnt photography at the studio of Annelise Kretschmer in Dortmund.
Arapoff’s mother was a governess to a Russian emigré family in Oxford, and Cyril came to stay with Captain V. Narishkin and his family at 3 St Andrew’s Road in Headington, and from 1933 his photographic studio was in this house.
Arapoff then opened a studio at 19 Manor Road (now numbered 41 Osler Road, right). He remained at this house until 1939.
Both Headington addresses are stamped on the back of the photographs he took during his period in Oxford.
Mike Seabourne in his book Cyril Arapoff: London in the Thirties (1988) says that Arapoff was so successful in his Headington studio that by 1935 he was considered by many to be the leading portrait photographer in Oxford.
The Oxfordshire Photographic Archive at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies has 5,000 copies of his pictures, including some taken in Headington.
In 1939 Arapoff left Oxford and went to work in the film industry, including the Crown Film Unit; and from 1961 until his death in 1976 he worked for the National Coal Board Film Unit.