Die Fotografie als Spiegel des Alltagslebens in Estland im 19. Jahrhundert
Photography as a Mirror of Daily Life in Estonia in the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the early photography in the territory of present-day Estonia. Numerous images survive from the 19th century, but their content and precise number have not previously been analysed. With the digitisation of this material in the past few years, it has become possible to achieve an overview of what was photographed in Estonia during those early decades. In the 1840s, the first photographers came to Estonia, but from this period there are no images that are certain to have come from the region. In the 1850s several photographers established studios in Reval and Dorpat and were active there for a number of decades. Yet only portraits and group photos survive from this period. Thus far, there are no known city or street views from Estonia that can be definitively dated to the 1850s. In the few shots, moreover, which likely come from this time, neither people nor concrete events are depicted. A notable change in the sphere of photography emerged relatively late in Estonia, during the 1860s, when photographing city and street scenes became popular. From this point on societal events as well as the life of the rural populations were captured in images. In the 1870s photography became technologically advanced enough that all spheres of life could be documented, but in daily practice, it was mostly traditional portraits and group photos as well as city scenes that were taken. In the 1890s, although the practice of photography had become widespread in Estonia, photographs of single events or of poverty and social problems were still rather rare. Although the precise number of extant images taken in Estonia during the 19th century cannot be determined, hundreds of thousands of them have survived to the present day. Almost 80 per cent of these are portraits or group photos, and only about 10 per cent are city or street scenes. The remaining ten per cent include both photos of specific events and those taken for a variety of other reasons. The surviving images can elicit various insights and understandings in the areas of material and intellectual culture.

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