Photo Album of Vilnius

Jan Hiksa was born in 1859 in Verkių Manor to a family of servants – forester Jan (Johan) Hiksa and his French wife Marija Magdalena Bulman. While living at Verkių Manor, between 1876 and 1900, Jan Hiksa began recording moments from the daily life of the manor’s owner, Duke Peter Wittgenstein, son of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the wealthiest landowner in Europe, as well as his family and servants, and the surroundings of Verkių Manor: tea ceremonies, hunting scenes, the park’s small architecture and vegetation, and the surrounding landscape. He travelled with the Duke’s family throughout Europe, capturing images of large cities and unexpected events, such as a massive fire in a restaurant. He immortalised moments from his steamboat trip from Vilnius to Verkiai (the journey started from the pier where Mindaugo Bridge is now located) and left photographs of the Upper Castle and panoramic views of Vilnius. In 1900, J. Hiksa moved to Šiauliai with his wife, Kazimiera Gricevičiūtė, a Lithuanian, and their seven children.

Interestingly, the first photographs in Lithuania and, in fact, in the entire territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were taken in Verkiai and have not been found to date (and have, in all likelihood, been lost). Just six months after photography appeared in Paris, the reconstruction of the palace was immortalised in a daguerreotype in the summer of 1839 by the 22-year-old Frenchman François Marcillac, who was the tutor of Duke Wittgenstein’s children.

Nobleman Tyburcy Chodźko was born in 1840 in the Vileikiškiai manor near Širvintos. For participating in the 1863 uprising, he was exiled to Russia, returning only in 1870 to settle in Warsaw. He then spent several decades working in photo studios in Poland, in the towns of Mazovia (Piotrków, Łomża, Płock), and in the Lithuanian resort of Druskininkai, where he spent a decade working and published a photo album of the town. He was forbidden from photographing in Vilnius, and the authorities rejected his requests to establish a photo studio in 1874, 1875, 1883, and later. It was only in 1900 that he finally settled in Vilnius and opened a photography salon on Gedimino Avenue. A year later, he was granted permission to take photographs in the city. In 1902, he exhibited his pictures at an agricultural exhibition in the Bernardine Garden, where they were awarded a gold medal. He took impressive photographs of barges floating down the Neris River, boatmen, riverbanks, and immortalised the Upper Castle, the hills of Antakalnis, the metal Green Bridge, and Didžioji Street. He also published postcards of his photographs.

Born in the Polotsk region in 1818, nobleman Józef Czechowicz arrived in Vilnius in 1865 as an experienced photographer, having learnt the secrets of his art in Paris. In his youth, he worked in a studio in Lublin, photographed in Kyiv and Chernihiv, and had a photo studio in Vitebsk.

Czechowicz immortalised Vilnius and its inhabitants in more than 300 photographs. In them, we see a city that no longer exists: the bell tower of the Franciscan church, St Joseph’s Church, the neighborhood on Maironio Street that was demolished after the war, the chapel of Jesus in Šnipiškės, the single-story manor houses on Žygimantų Street, the Royal Mill, the wooden circus building on Cathedral Square, the wooden building if market scales on Lukiškių Square, and others. He photographed the city’s prominent landmarks (churches, the university), the railway, various construction sites, fairs, and surroundings.

The most beautiful photographs were included in his album ‘Vilniaus vaizdai‘ (‘Images of Vilnius’), which was sold in bookshops in Vilnius. Together with Count Vladimir Zubov from Šiauliai, he sailed down the Neris River from its source to its mouth, capturing the riverbanks and compiling an album entitled ‘Neries pakrančių vaizdai’ (‘Images of the Riverbanks of the Neris’). He would spend the night in a tent on one of the hills of Vilnius with his photography equipment and laboratory supplies to capture the most impressive images.

Concerned about copyright, he protected his works with a trademark registered in St Petersburg. He was a member of the French Photographic Society and received awards for his photographs in Paris.

Czechowicz’s wooden photography studio operated in the so-called Veršynas, approximately where the Rotonda café is located today.

Born in Volhynia, western Ukraine, Wilhelm Zacharczyk arrived in Vilnius from St Petersburg in 1865. From 1866 to 1870, he worked as a photographer at the Vilnius Astronomical Observatory. This was the world’s second observatory after London to photograph the sun. Wilhelm Zacharczyk used a heliograph to observe the sun and the dynamics of its spots and photographed them. He also conducted spectral studies of the sun’s surface and photometry of stars. At the same time, he began photographing Vilnius and compiled the Vilnius Album. A total of fifty photographs of Vilnius taken by Zacharczyk are known, including panoramas of the city (the Bernardine Garden, The Hill of Three Crosses, Užupis, Paupys, Belmontas, Lukiškės, Antakalnis, etc.), the banks of the Vilnia and Neris rivers, the most famous architectural monuments (St. Anne’s and St. Bernardine’s churches, the Gate of Dawn, the current Presidential Palace, the Upper Castle Hill, the railway station, etc.) and the suburbs (Verkiai, Liepkalnis, Vingis, Antakalnis, Markučiai, etc.). Most of the photos were taken by Zacharczyk from the highest hills in Vilnius and its surroundings, where he had to carry all his heavy equipment. At that time, photographs were taken using the wet collodion process on silver plates, and they needed to be developed immediately. This meant that the photographer not only had to carry a heavy camera with a tripod but also lug around an entire chemical laboratory.

Stereoscopic photographs were shown to Vilnius residents as early as 1859 and 1865 at special exhibitions, where viewers could see three-dimensional images through binoculars. This entertainment was popular, and several decades later, someone came up with the idea of improving these demonstrations. In 1888, the German photographer and inventor August Furman submitted his invention documentation to the London patent office. However, demonstrations of the so-called imperial panorama (the Kaiserpanorama or photoplasticon) had been held since 1880. It was a mechanical device with a rotating mechanism inside that changed slides every few seconds. Up to 25 viewers could watch colourful (hand-coloured) changing three-dimensional images (of world cities, nature, exotic countries, etc.) through stereoscopic binoculars. This use of stereoscopic photography was very popular with viewers, and these devices spread throughout Europe – in 1910, there were more than 250 of them in operation on the continent (162 of them in Germany). Furman’s archive contained more than 100,000 photographs, which were shown in photoplasticons in various cities. This form of entertainment lost its popularity in European cities with the gradual spread of cinema.

In Vilnius, the ‘Terra’ photoplasticon operated in a building at 11 Dominikonų Street before World War I, but the fate of this equipment is unknown. Surviving devices are on display in museums in Berlin, Munich, Antwerp, Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, and elsewhere.

Adomas Daukša, a Lithuanian nobleman, was a photographer and painter. After moving to Vilnius in 1897, he set up a photography studio together with Jan Hermanowicz on what is now Barboros Radvilaitės Street, which the photographer Bronislavas Medzionis ran. From 1898 to 1902, Daukša’s studio operated on Dominikonų and Šv. Jono Streets.

In 1899, A. Daukša not only photographed the agricultural exhibition held in Bernardinų Garden, but also had his own photography pavilion where he sold his paintings made from photographs.

In 1901–1902, A. Daukša’s company began photographing the most beautiful views of Vilnius for mass-produced colour postcards. In order to capture the city in the most impressive way possible, they climbed onto roofs and chimneys. B. Medzionis coloured the photos developed in the lab with liquid paints.

In 1904–1905, A. Daukša travelled around Lithuania and present-day western Belarus, photographing Catholic and Orthodox churches: their churchyards, exteriors, interiors, and epitaphs. The Kaišiadorys Museum has a collection of 172 glass negatives with photographs of places of worship taken by A. Daukša. The photographer left extremely detailed images of the church in Nemenčinė, capturing the altar, organ, and other details that were later destroyed.

Bronislovas Miedzionis (Medžionis) was another Lithuanian photographer who worked with Adomas Daukša. From 1904 to 1915, he ran a photo studio on what is now Šv. Jono Street in Vilnius. From 1904, Miedzionis’ summer pavilion operated on Didžioji Street near the Church of St. Paraskeva (Piatnickaja). Miedzionis photographed the Lithuanian community in Vilnius (teachers and students, priests, and also took wedding photos), as well as members of Lithuanian societies, pilgrim processions, and portraits of individuals. His most famous group portrait is of the four Vileišis brothers, taken in 1904, which was used as the basis for the monument located at the beginning of T. Kosciuškos Street to the three most famous Vileišis brothers.

The photographer captured various events in Vilnius and prepared photo reports for ‘Wiadomości ilustrowane’ and other periodicals. His photo studio continued to operate after World War I, and its address was listed as the ‘B. Miedzionio Photography Studio near the Piatnickaja Church’.

Born in Vilnius, photographer and artist Aleksander Władysław Strausss studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1853 to 1857. Upon returning to Vilnius, he taught drawing at the Bajorų (Noblemen’s) Institute and worked as an artist at the Vilnius City Theatre. He painted portraits of theatre actors and members of the nobility (notably Eustachy Tyszkiewicz). From 1866, while working in various city photo studios with other colleagues, he made a name for himself as the best portrait photographer in town. In 1880, he set up his photo studio at Didžioji g. 5 and opened a branch in Kaunas. Strauss immortalised many famous Vilnius residents in his photographs, including the Tyszkiewicz family of nobles (Counts Józef, Vladislov, Antoni, Aleksander, and Countess Maria), Marija Skirmuntaitė, Kazimierz Römer, and even his fellow photographer Jan Hiksa.

He trained many other famous Vilnius photographers and shared the secrets of photography with the Čižai brothers and Stanisław Filibert Fleury.

After Strauss died in 1896, his wife Jekaterina took over the photo studio, and the company maintained its good reputation for a few more decades. In 1907, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė visited the studio and had her picture taken there.

Born in Tauragė, nobleman Abdon Korzon learned the secrets of photography in Paris in the 1860s. After moving to Vilnius, he established a photo studio, which operated for only a few years, from 1859 until the 1863 uprising, in which Korzon participated. Despite his relatively short period of activity in Vilnius, the creative and hard-working photographer made his mark on the city as one of the first authors of city panoramas (Lukiškių Street, the Old Town as seen from Pamėnkalnis hill, the railway, etc.) and street scenes, as well as the pioneer of stereoscopic (3D) photography in Lithuania (taking around 20 such photographs). In 1860, the photographer immortalised the construction of the Paneriai Tunnel near Vilnius and the builders working there. He photographed famous Vilnius residents (poet and writer Ludwik Kondratowicz, who wrote under the pseudonym of Władysław Syrokomla, historian Adom Honory Kirkor) and leaders of the uprising (Zygmunt Sierakowski, Jakob Gieysztor, and others). He actively supported the 1863 uprising, hiding weapons for the rebels, for which the Tsarist authorities confiscated his photo studio equipment and photographs, and the photographer himself was exiled to Siberia.

Korzon had a photo studio on Didžioji Street, but another building was constructed on the site after the war.

Stanisław Filibert Fleury was a Pole of French descent born in the vicinity of the city, in the village of Pupojai between Dvarčionys and Galgiai. The future photographer and artist studied at the Vilnius Drawing School in his youth, and later learned the secrets of photography from Aleksander Władysław Strauss. In 1884, together with photographers Faustinus Łopaciński and Baczański Ryszard (the latter later owned a photo studio at Pilies g. 12), he founded a photo studio at Didžioji g. 20; in 1892, he became its sole owner. Some places in Vilnius – such as the Cathedral, and the Church of the Holy Cross (Bonifratres), St Anne’s and the Bernardine church – have changed little since Fleury captured them, but we can see horse-drawn carts, people wearing 19th-century clothing, cobblestone streets, horse-drawn trams, etc. Other parts of the city (houses on Rotušės Street, Pilies Street, Bazilijonų Street, and the banks of the Neris River) are completely unrecognisable due to the destruction caused by the war and subsequent post-war demolition. Particularly impressive are Fleury’s photographs, which capture the now significantly changed suburbs of Vilnius – Belmontas, Rasos, and Naujoji Vilnia.

Fleury captured hundreds of Vilnius residents, including nobles and counts (the Römer and Tyszkiewicz families), clergy, scientists, engineers, and participants in the uprising. He also captured M. K. Čiurlionis, who lived nearby. Fleury was one of the enthusiasts of stereoscopic photography in Lithuania, creating ninety spatial images of Vilnius and its surroundings. These photographs were taken with a special camera with two lenses, viewed through special glasses, creating the illusion of a three-dimensional image.

Today, Vilnius is a very international city, home to more than 70,000 foreigners, who make up about a tenth of the city’s population. This multiculturalism is nothing new; the city had a similar character in the past, for example, in the 19th century, Vilnius was home to many French, Germans, and Italians. One of the residents of Vilnius at that time was Giuseppe Achille Bonoldi, an Italian who had arrived from Barcelona. He was a singing teacher in Vilnius, gave solo concerts, and sang in operas; Bonoldi was friends with the composer Stanisław Moniuszko, who lived on Vokiečių Street. After spending two decades in Vilnius, Bonoldi unexpectedly became one of the organisers of the uprising and managed to avoid punishment due to being an Italian citizen. A lesser-known detail of his biography is that he was also a photographer, and his most famous photograph is a portrait of one of the leaders of the uprising, Konstantinas Kalinauskas.

The Lithuanian State Historical Archives hold 288 photographs of rebels and their family members, confiscated during searches of manors, including searches of Vilnius photographers’ studios.

The trio of brothers descended from the noble Mintowt-Czyż family. Wacław Czyż learned the subtleties of photography from Aleksander W. Strausss. Together with musician, poet, and photographer Faustinus Łopaciński, in 1875, Wacław Czyż established a photo studio on Arklių Street (now Bazilijonų Street). A few years later, in 1879, Wacław went into business with his brothers, Henryk and Edward, opening the Czyż Brothers photo studio at the same location. The French inscription ‘Frères Czyž’ often appeared on portrait photographs of Vilnius residents taken in this studio. In 1891, the studio was moved to Aušros Vartų g. 15, near St Teresa’s Church, where it operated until 1915. The brothers usually divided the work between themselves: Henryk took care of the decorations and seating of the people being photographed, Edward took the photographs, and Wacław developed the photos in the laboratory. This photo studio was one of the most popular in Vilnius at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, so hundreds of portraits of old Vilnius residents with the brothers’ signature mark have survived in Vilnius museums.

Miron Boutkowsky began working in his studio on Šv. Stepono Street in 1888, at the age of 23. For several years, his studio operated on Vokiečių Street. In 1896, Miron was joined by his brother Leon, and the studio began to be called ‘The Boutkowsky Brothers’. It was one of the most popular studios in Vilnius and operated on Bazilijonų Street (then Arklių Street) until World War I. Its letterhead was decorated with the following inscriptions: ‘Photographers to His Majesty the Shah of Persia, the Boutkowsky Brothers,’ ‘The Boutkowsky Brothers, Photographers, recipients of a personal letter of thanks from Pope Pius X,’ and ‘Freires Boutkowsky, Vilna.’ The brothers specialised in portrait photography, but they also captured the architecture of Vilnius and city events. Miron Boutkowsky compiled and distributed collections of his photographs in postcards entitled ‘Collection Vilna’ (‘Vilnius Collection’) and ‘Vues des Vilna’ (‘Views of Vilnius’), featuring the Green Bridge and St. Rapolas Church, the Užupis market, Bernardinų Park, and other city scenes. In 1906, the brothers compiled an album of photographs of the Upper Castle. In 1937, the photography company ‘The Boutkowsky Brothers’ was still operating at Gedimino pr. 22.

In 1860, a thirty-year-old Polish nobleman and Prussian citizen named Albert Swieykowski arrived in Vilnius from Toruń and worked here until 1866. In a photo studio he established in the city, he created portraits of Vilnius’ high society (e.g., Eustachy Tyszkiewicz, founder of the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities, and others), photographed the city streets and churches (St. Peter and Paul’s, Kalvarijų Holy Cross, the Cathedral), and captured the fountain that once stood in Simono Daukanto Square in a photograph of the current Presidential Palace. He created the first panoramas of several parts of the city. Particularly impressive is the five-part panorama of the left bank of the Neris River, captured from a hill in Šnipiškės, which shows Žygimantų Street, which has changed dramatically to this day, the brick arch Green Bridge, and the unurbanised river banks. Swieykowski also captured the surroundings of Vilnius in the 1870s: Paupys, Markučiai, Trinapolis, and Verkiai. He immortalised various objects that have since disappeared, such as the Tyszkiewicz Mill in Paupys and the Paupio Tavern, as well as the ‘Iron Hut’ (‘Geležinė trobelė’) in Rasos. 

The photographer compiled the first collection of photographs in Lithuania, ‘Album of Vilnius’ (32 photographs), which included the city’s most important architectural monuments, panoramas, and the most beautiful places surrounding Vilnius. His photography studio operated in the Müller House (Vokiečių g. 26), which the owner fashionably advertised as photographie americaine.

Nobleman Jan Hermanowicz, born in Trakai County in 1871, was licensed to photograph county towns in the last decade of the 19th century. In 1895, he settled in Vilnius and worked as a photographer, opening his photo studio a few years later. He worked in the city with some interruptions. In 1904, he and his wife Joana unsuccessfully attempted to open a branch of their photo studio in Naujoji Vilnia. In 1906, he created a series of photographs immortalising the religious procession of the Body of God – a substantial crowd of pilgrims walking from Vilnius’ Old Town to Jeruzalė (the ‘Jerusalem‘ neighbourhood in the northern outskirts of Vilnius, famous for the Vilnius Calvary and 35 Stations of the Cross). The photographs were later distributed in special luxurious folders. One can imagine how quickly the photographer had to move and how inventive he had to be to capture the dynamically moving procession from the balconies of different buildings in Vilnius. One of these balconies was on the Vilnius Teachers’ House, located at the intersection of Vilnius and Klaipėda Streets. He also created religious vignettes featuring Vilnius’ religious symbols, such as the Cathedral and a portrait of the bishop, as well as collages of religious processions.

Bolesława Tallat-Kelpšaitė was born in Warsaw in 1908, and her husband, Edmund Zdanowski (Zdanowscy ), was born three years earlier in Vilnius. The famous married couple were photographers who were students of Jan Bułhak; they went on to make a name for themselves as artists in interwar Vilnius.

B. Tallat-Kelpšaitė spent her teenage years in Liepāja, Latvia, where her parents had a photography studio. In 1925, the family moved to Kaunas. At that time, their daughter was already helping her mother, Janina Tallat-Kelpšienė, in her photography salon. In 1928, she moved to Vilnius and entered Stephan Bathory University, where she requested to study photography under Jan Bułhak, who had already been teaching her future husband, Edmund, for five years. Having been married for five years, the couple opened a photo studio in 1934 on Vilniaus Street and worked together as photographers. The Zdanowskis created romantic photographs of Vilnius, depicting various streets and city panoramas, reflecting the photographic style their teacher promoted.

After the war, they repatriated to Poland and settled in Gdynia near Gdańsk.

In the 19th century, most photographers in Vilnius were men, but a few women also practised this craft. One of the first female photographers in Lithuania was Miriam Rapoport, who opened the ‘Miriam’ photo studio at Vilniaus g. 23 in 1899 and worked there until 1902. At that time, the authorities required special permits to take photographs in the city or its suburbs. Arguing that such permits had already been issued to the male photographers Adomas Daukša and Tyburcy Chodźko, who were deemed professional photographers, officials refused to grant Mirjam Rapoport the right to photograph the city’s surroundings, claiming that she was only an amateur. The studio, which was already run by other people, continued to operate until World War I.

Notably, when male photographers died, it was usually their wives who took over the business and continued their work. It can be assumed that wives almost always helped their husbands with mixing chemicals, taking photographs, and developing photos in laboratories, so they accumulated a great deal of knowledge. Incidentally, it is said that Jan Bułhak was also encouraged to take up photography by his wife.

Jan Bułhak is often referred to as the father of Polish artistic photography or the pioneer of pictorialism in Polish photography. He is one of the most prominent photographers of Vilnius in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bułhak photographed Vilnius in several series. Between 1911 and 1914, he compiled a collection of 462 photographs of the city in 15 volumes, commissioned by the city. He photographed the city again in the interwar period. In his last series, Bułhak and his son, Janusz, captured images of the destruction of parts of war-torn Vilnius.

Jan Bułhak captured thousands of views of old Vilnius: streets, alleys, courtyards, building facades, and interiors. During the interwar period, his photographs were used to illustrate articles about Vilnius in the press, the first city guides, other books about Vilnius, and postcards of Vilnius with the images he captured.

J. Bułhak’s photo studio changed addresses several times: it was located on Didžioji Street, Uosto Street (now Pamėnkalnio Street), Jogailos Street, in a building on what is now Kudirkos Square, and during the interwar period, the photographer could be reached by telephone at 9-68.

J. Bułhak published articles on photography in the press, including an article on the first photographers in Vilnius. He was a photography teacher and authored the book ‘Fotografika’ (‘Photography’) and the textbook ‘Šviesos estetika’ (‘The Aesthetics of Light’).

He headed the Department of Art Photography at the university. On his initiative, the Vilnius Photo Club, the most important centre of photography in interwar Poland, operated in Vilnius from 1928.

In 2018, the third-floor window on the façade of Gedimino Avenue was restored, marking the location of the photography and zincography studio of Lithuanian artist Aleksandras Jurašaitis.

Jurašaitis began taking photographs while living in Bielsk near the Białowieża Forest, where he had a photo studio. His pictures of bison were used illegally in the Polish and German press, on postcards, in albums, and are still presented in photography history books as the work of other authors.

In 1902, Jurašaitis moved with his family to Vilnius and continued his business there. While working in Vilnius in the early 20th century, he immortalised the most prominent figures of Lithuanian culture and events of the Lithuanian community: Jonas Basanavičius, Antanas Smetona, Petras Vileišis, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, Lazdynų Pelėda (Sofija Pšibiliauskienė), Žemaitė, Marija and Jurgis Šlapeliai, Gabrielius Landsbergis-Žemkalnis, Stanislava Jakševičiūtė-Venclauskienė, Juozas Tallat-Kelpsa, members of the Lithuanian Science Society in their studio and on the plot of land in Pamėnkalnis purchased for the construction of the House of the Nation. Jurašaitis photographed the first Lithuanian art exhibitions, their exhibits, and the works of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (paintings, vignettes, and sketches).

After Jurašaitis died, his wife Marija Jurašaitienė and daughter Aleksandra Jurašaitytė took over the photo studio; Aleksandra took the famous photos of the 1917 Vilnius Conference, the Lithuanian Council, and the Signatories of the 1918 Act of Independence of Lithuania. One of Jurašaitytė’s photographs, taken in Paupys in 1917, immortalised the future President of Lithuania – Antanas Stulginskis.

Sofija Urbonavičiūtė was born in Moscow in 1915 into a family of Lithuanian refugees. In 1918, she returned to Vilnius with her parents. She studied at the Vytautas the Great Gymnasium, a Lithuanian school, and later studied painting at Steponas Batoras University (now the Faculty of Fine Arts on the current Maironio Street). She was the only Lithuanian woman to graduate from this university with a degree in fine arts during the interwar period. She was also a student of the celebrated photographer Jan Bułhak, and later began working as his assistant. She created theatre sets for Lithuanian plays and painted pictures. In 1938–1939, she studied in Paris, but her studies were interrupted by the war, and Sofija returned to Lithuania. In 1943, she was appointed head of the Photography Department of the Cultural Monuments Protection Agency, and from 1943 to 1945, she photographed Vilnius, part of which was in ruins due to the war. As a result of persecution and censorship by the authorities, she was expelled from the Artists’ Union in 1951 and was not allowed to continue teaching at the Art Institute. As a result, her paintings and graphic works were unavailable even to art historians, let alone the general public, and some of her photographs and negatives were unfortunately lost. Those that miraculously survived are priceless testimonies to the war-ravaged and vanished Vilnius.