French traces in Lithuanian 19th century photography

Since Daguerre's invention of photography in 1839, France has been a major centre of photographic development throughout the 19th century, atracting photographers from other countries. Photographers from Lithuania travelled to France to get acquainted with photographic innovations (J. Czechowicz, A. Korzon), took part in the activities of the Société française de photographie (SFP) (E. Koziell, who was the secretary of the society from 1868 to 1879, J. Czechowicz, B. Jaworski and B. H. Tyszkiewicz were members of the Society), had their own ateliers while living in France (E. Koziell) or organised ethnographic expeditions (B. Jaworski and B. H. Tyszkiewicz). A photographer hired by a French company (A. Rohrbach) took photographs in Lithuania, and the Parisian photographer Jacques-Philippe Potteau included Lithuanian portraits taken in 1864 in the album of the anthropological collection of the Natural History Museum in Paris. The examples listed and not mentioned above, which have come to the attention of researchers but have not been explored, encourage a targeted study of the French trace in Lithuanian photography.

The postdoctoral fellowship will involve a search in French archives for written and visual sources relevant to the history of 19th century Lithuanian photography. I hope that the broader picture that will emerge from this research will add further dimensions to the interaction between Lithuania , which then was part of the Russian Empire, and France both before and after the 1863 Uprising.

This project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), agreement No. S-PD-24-126.