Author(s): Aneta Ostroróg / Language(s): Polish
Issue: 14/2005
The author has dealt not with the photographic career of Ostroróg, a.k.a. ‘Walery’, but with his biography. She was able to complete the biography and correct existing errors by making use of the archives of the Home Office, General Register Office and National Archives in London, the Société Française de Photographie in Paris, manuscripts never previously used for such a purpose in the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as interviews with Ostrorógs son, Stanisław Ignacy Ostroróg, published in 1894 by N. Hurst in the journal The Woman at Home. Ostoróg (ill. 1) was born in 1833 or 1834 in Mogilev in Lithuania, the son of Ignacy (?). He finished the Cadet School in Petersburg and served in the Tsarist Guard. He probably deserted, as during the Crimean War he found himself on the opposing side, in the Polish Division of the Sultans Cossacks, financed by the British government. It is possible that already then he became interested in photography as according to Nadar (Quand jetais photographic, Paris 1900) he was engaged during his stay in Varna in producing daguerreotypes. There, he also designed a statue of the Polish King Ladislaus III „Warneńczyk”, who perished in the battle of 1444 fighting the Ottoman Turks. After the end of the war in 1856 and a short sojourn in England, Ostroróg stayed in Paris, where he designed and patented a musical instrument called a melodina. He also wrote poetry and journalistic prose. In 1864 he obtained British citizenship and was married in London to Teodozja Waleria Gwozdecka, whose middle name became the basis for his artistic pseudonym. He opened his first photographic studio between 1864 and 1871 in Marseilles. He established a firm in Paris in 1874 but was forced to sell it in 1878. In 1884, having moved to London, he set up another studio. His photographs appeared at a succession of exhibitions, where they were awarded prizes and distinctions: At the exhibitions of the Société Française de Photographie in Paris in 1869 and 1874 and at the great general exhibitions in Vienna in 1873, in Paris in 1878 and 1889 and at the international exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Ostroróg died in 1890 in London. His studio and the pseudonym ‘Walery’ were adopted by the elder of his two sons, Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg, whose firm operated between 1900 and 1908, subsequently moving to Paris.
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