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

  • Subiect: 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 for processing 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 I I . The copies which might have been stored in the artist's studio vanished in 1944 when Bucharest was bombed and Szathmari's house, with all its treasured collection, was distroyed. At the Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest there are a few photos which might have belonged to the album. They are as follows: a detail of Turkish cavalry, a Turkish camp of Sibley tents, a guard house on the border of the Danube, and an elderly bashibouzouk along with his gypsy girlfriend, comfortably seated on a tattered carpet. The latter one was published in the French magazine "Le Monde Illustré" of October 24, 1857. Three portraits of Russian generals and three others of high ranking Austrian officers may be added to the list. None of them is bound on cardboard or has any caption. The collection of Szathmari's glass plates which is stored at the same library might offer a surprise in that they were never copied since the 1930's when they were acquired from the artist's descendents. Recently I had the opportunity to discover abroad some photos which certainly belong to the lost album. At the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York, there are three pictures by Szathmari from that period. They are: "The Russian lancers' encampment in Craiova", "The Bombardment of Silistra" and the p o r t r a i t of Lieutenant General Soimonoff, commander of the 104th Russian Division, k i l l ed in the battle of Inkermann. A l l of them are bound on cardboard, surrounded by a lithographed ornament and the French captions are written in black i n k by the author's hand. Their dimension is 15.3 x 21,1 cm. and 25,2 x 18,3 cm. respectively. Another eleven pictures by Szathmari were brought to my a t t e n t i o n w h i l e c o - o p e r a t i n g w i t h a B r i t i s h TV team p r o d u c i n g a documentary movie about the Crimean War. With respect to this I am grateful to Ms. Teresa Cherfas from the Barraclough Carey Productions Ltd. in London who provided me photocopies of the mentioned images from the Royal Archives at Windsor. The eleven plates which have the same size and decoration as the photographs in Rochester, New York, are part of the album possessed by Queen Victoria, probably miraculously saved from fire. Two of them represent Turkish artillerymen with their horse-drawn guns. One of the pictures shows five Turkish officers on horseback. Five other pictures show a group of handsome Turkish infantrymen posing in various attitudes in order to reveal all the details of their uniforms, weapons and equipment. Some are in full dress, others in undress, summer or winter uniforms. Three Ottoman officers proudly posed for another picture; all of them wear gold braided tunics which show their ranks of captain, colonel and major. The last two photos show a group of Cossacks and three Russian volunteers in their distinctive uniforms. All these newly discovered photographs are welcome additions for the Romanian researcher enabling him to ascertain, once more, the importance of Carol Szathmari's contribution as historian with a camera to the documentation of the Crimean War in particular and to the history of photography in general.
  • Limba de redactare: română
  • Vezi publicația: Muzeul Naţional
  • Anul publicaţiei: 1998
  • Referinţă bibliografică pentru nr. revistă: X; anul 1998
  • Paginaţia: 71-82
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