Jaka powinna być „Historia Fotografii Polskiej do 1914 r.”?
How Should “A History of Polish Photography until 1914” Be?

Summary/Abstract: The article contains a series of postulations for researchers engaged in preparing the future “History of Polish Photography until 1914”. The author of this article has made a survey of source materials upon which such a “History” should be based. The written sources comprise in the main newspapers, directories, registers and calendars. The most valuable information, however, is contained in the archival sources to which the author devotes much attention, and in particular those records arising in the Congress Kingdom of Poland under the suzerainty of the Russian Empire. These archival materials were the product of censorship and police control over all forms of printed matter and reproduced materials, in which latter category photographs were, inevitably, also placed. The photographers’ names, together with personal information and particulars relating to their studios may be found in special registers (also including the owners of printing houses and bookshops) compiled for the Central Office of Censorship in Warsaw (currently belonging to the Central Archives in St. Petersburg), as well as in documents compiled in the governor-general or municipal offices of the chief of police and records filed at the chancellery of governors to the ten provinces (gubernie) into which the Polish Congress Kingdom was administratively divided (as from 1866). These documents contain applications made by photographers for the granting of permission from the authorities to set up studio-businesses and the ensuing bureaucratic procedure. In the final stage, the author enumerates the issues and themes which ought to be covered by the said “History”: the photography historian’s research laboratory and methodological problems; the beginnings of mobile photography in the form of the daguerreotype; stabilisation of the profession in the 1860s; economic aspects of the photographer’s profession in the context of the needs presented by society; the photographic techniques and materials applied; alterations to the studio furnishings and equipment employed, the studio premises’ architecture and transformations resulting from the increasing sensitivity of photographic paper; the photographic portrait as a means of emphasizing social standing, urban landscape and architectural views as a form of advertisement and attempts made by the proprietors to increase their studios’ profitability; the fluctuating number of photographic studios between certain districts and regions; the influence of German photography on Polish professional photography; the role of photography in the culture of European nations and in that of Polish society; finally, a lexicon of photographic studios functioning in those lands regarded as being historically Polish (i.e. the Respublica prior to its partition at the end of the 18th century). Digitalized and reedited material

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