Figure 1.--Here we see a cabinet card portrai of a young Polish violinist in 1901. The young man may be his teacher, we are unsure. We are also not sure if his collar buttoning jacket suit is some kind of school uniform or just a period style. The cabinet card is the classic style we see during the late-19th century, both in Europe and America. It was a standard-sized card, 6.5 X 4.2 inches (16.5X10.7 cm). The studio was Renoma in Varsovie, Warsaw.

The first Daguerreotypists wre more like scientists or even artists than commercial photographers. They experimented with Talbotypes (calotypes) and Daguerrotypes. Andrzej Radwański is believed to have produced the first PolishDaguerrotype (1839). Polish Dags are rare, but they are generally much less common throughout Europe than was the case of America. The painter artist Marcin Zalewski in Warsaw was a noted Daguereotypists and considered to be the father of art photograpgher. Other importaht Daguerreotypists included: Jozef Gloisner in Lwów, Jan Stefan Kuczyński in Kraków; and Jan Moritz Scholtz. Scholtz was a respected lithographer and published lithographic prints from his Daguerrotypes. Ambrotypes seem less common. Maksymilian Strasz, the Kielce district's head engineer, published a photography handbook (1856) that became a kind of Bible for Polish photographers. Dags dominated the industry into the 1860s when as in other countries, the albumen process and CDVs became the dominant format. And unlike Dags, they were done in substantial numbers, especially in western areas of Poland which were part of the German and Austrian Emmpires. Warsaw in the Tsarist section of Poland was also important. Soon cabinet cards also appeared, but CDVs remained common until the turn-of-the 20th century. We note the same classic cabinet card styles as in Western Europe and America at the turn of the 20th century. And we begin to see snapshots as well, although the relative low incomes of many Poles meant that cameras and photogaph was not as prevalent as was the case in Western Europe, especially Germany. Even so we begin to see snapshots for the first time (1900s). We have not yet archived very many Polish snapshots, but we begin to see more after World War I in the 1920s. The image here is a typical family snapshot such as could have been taken throughout Europe in the 1930s.

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Created: 4:57 PM 10/10/2013
Last updated: 4:57 PM 10/10/2013