Fotografii de Carol Szathmari din războiul Crimeii în colecții americane și britanice
Photographs from the Crimean war by Carol Szathmari in American and British collections

Summary/Abstract: Until the identity of the American daguerreotypist of the American-Mexican War of 1846-1847 is known. Carol Szathmari (1812-1887) must be considered the world's first combat photographer.In the first year of the Russian-Turkish War, later known as the Crimean War (1853-1856), Szathmari decided to take his camera to the battlefield. Using a wagon specially equipped with a dark room forprocessing the glass plates with wet collodion, he went to Danube's banks and various other places to document the war. In April 1854 his van became a target for the Turkish artillery from Oltenitza, who thought it belonged to a Russian spy. It was fortunate for the artist that the gunners were not accurate enough to hit him . Besides landscapes, fortifications and battlefields , he photographed various troops, both Turkish and Russian, and their commanding officers. He exhibited his photos, bound in an album, at the Paris World Exposition of 1855. Because Szathmari's were the first images of the war, prior to Roger Fenton's large collection of photographs taken almost a year later, his album was much praised and he was presented with many awards. He eventually offered his work to Queen Victoria, to Emperors Napoleon III and Franz Josef I and to other royalty of Europe.The album's contents is known only from descriptions of the French reviewer, Ernest Lacan, in his brochure Esquisses photographiques à propos de l'Exposition Universelle et de la Guerre d'Orient (Paris 1856). Unfortunately, none of the albums survived: the one offered to the French Emperor burned in the Tuilleries Palace during the Commune of 1871; Queen Victoria's copy also burned in 1912 during a fire which ravaged Windsor Castle; those in Austria and Germany disappeared during W.W. I and II.

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