The desire to capture time in material forms was an integral part of human aspirations. Having gone through a number of stages from primitive, from the point of view of modern man, rock paintings to the sophisticated sculpture of the ancient era, and later – to various genres of painting, from the first third of the 19th century. the desire to “leave oneself in history” found an outlet in the art of photography. Literally in a few decades, photography in most countries of the world turns into an everyday element of everyday life, and the presence of one's own photo portrait becomes a sign of good tone not only for the wealthiest, but also for the broad strata of society.
As in many cases of the emergence and spread of new forms of art, the centers of the distribution of photography are cities. It is here that thousands of photo studios and workshops appear and develop. The progress of photography did not bypass the territory of our country, the land of which from the end of the 18th century. were divided between two empires – Austrian (from 1867 – Austro-Hungarian) and Russian. At the end of the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th century. in Dnipro, which in imperial times was called Katerynoslav, there were several dozen private photo workshops that gave everyone the opportunity to capture their own image on a piece of photo paper. It is interesting that the vast majority of photo studio owners in our city were Jews.
The development of the photographic industry contributed to the fact that, on the one hand, photography became cheaper. On the other hand, it remained available mainly to the townspeople, because most of the inhabitants of the Russian Ukraine lived in the countryside, and therefore had episodic contacts with urban civilization and rather illusory chances for their own photo portrait. It is a telling fact that most of the documents of the Russian Empire, which identified a person (for example, in the usual passport for each of us) did not have a photo. So, for us contemporaries, who can take several dozen photos with a smartphone camera in a couple of minutes, it is difficult to imagine that even with the spread of salon cameras, for many people, their own photos remained inaccessible.
All the more valuable are those photos that, despite world wars, political and social cataclysms, genocides, have survived to our time. Photography as a historical source is an extremely valuable resource for learning about the past. However, like any source, it requires special attention to correctly “read” the meanings encoded in it. For those who would like to see how multi-layered photography can be, we recommend watching the thematic video on the Museum's YouTube channel.
By visiting the Museum's permanent exhibition, you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the Katerynoslav photo studio of the beginning of the 20th century. Museum employees attempted to fully reproduce the interior – from the wallpaper ornament to the electrical wiring and lighting switches. On the walls of the photo studio are the products of its masters – photos of the inhabitants of Katerynoslav at the beginning of the 20th century. The window offers a view of the intersection of the central Katerininsky Avenue and Sadova Street (now D. Yavornytskyi Avenue and Fabra Street). The main equipment in the photo studio was, of course, a camera. In our case, it is a wide-format studio camera manufactured by the Russian company Joseph Pokorniy. Its founder was born in 1862 in Odesa. Already at the age of 17, he founded his own workshop for the production of photo equipment. He set up his first store in his hometown in his own building on the street. Yevreyska, 53. Subsequently, he had specialized shops and establishments related to the photography industry, not only in Odesa, but also in Kyiv, Moscow, Rostov, as well as a factory for the production of photographic paper in Libava (now Liepaja, Latvia). I. Pokorny was an active member of a number of photographic societies (including the most influential in the empire – the Russian Photographic Society, founded in 1894), as well as the laureate of several prizes for the invention and improvement of photographic equipment and accessories.
Nowadays, every visitor to Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” can not only see one of the works of J. Pokorniy, but also take their own photo against the background of the cityscape of the last century. For this, you only need to visit the Museum.
Yehor Vradii